The following is a re-print of a past column by former Advertiser columnist Stephen Thorning, who passed away on Feb. 23, 2015.
Some text has been updated to reflect changes since the original publication and any images used may not be the same as those that accompanied the original publication.
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Last week’s column was a quick look at the rich tradition of poetry written on the subject of Elora. There has also been a great deal of prose about the village over the years, by residents and visitors.
The poetry about Elora was written as a form of artistic expression. Prose writing, on the other hand, served a variety of purposes. The tradition includes booster literature, travel literature, fictional treatments of Elora subjects, and historical writing.
Booster literature is the oldest of these streams. Elora began as a business investment, and it is not surprising that Captain William Gilkison pulled strings to have his village and its merits covered in Scottish magazines. Woodcuts and engravings often accompanied booster literature that was published in popular magazines.
Booster literature, in extolling the merits of Elora, glossed over or ignored the less attractive aspects of the village. It could also be embellished: Captain Gilkison left instructions for an artist who planned to visit Elora to add buildings that did not exist, or that were merely in the planning stages.
A fine example of Elora’s booster literature is an article published in 1864 in Canadian Illustrated News. The article follows the normal outline for such writing, giving a few historical facts and stressing rapid but solid progress. The article notes the growth of Elora from a population of 60 in 1847 to 1,500 only 15 years later.
The bulk of this article describes some of the economic activity of the village, but already in 1864 it was the scenery that captured the first attention of visiting writers: “Next to the really magnificent scenery of the locality, its most marked features are the existence of numerous mill sites, of which there are nearly a score in the distance of three miles, and many of which are being purchased by capitalists.”
The 19th-century style of booster literature, which consisted most often of articles in popular magazines, no longer exists, but the pamphlets and brochures issued by the Elora and District Chamber of Commerce and the Elora marketing committee can be considered its successors.
The article goes on to extol the importance of Elora’s cattle market, and major business firms such as J.M. Fraser’s Elora Mill (now the Elora Mill and Spa) and the Kirk & Clarke general store (Drimmie Florist), both of which were illustrated by woodcuts.
The article concludes with plans for further improvement, in particular a branch railway from Guelph.
Travel literature flourished in 19th-century Canada. Several books made mention of Elora, but the outstanding work in this genre is Picturesque Canada, an 880-page work covering all of Canada. It was first published in a magazine format of some 30 sections, and in a hard-bound two-volume set in 1882. It was reprinted a few years ago.
Picturesque Canada was edited by principal George Grant of Queen’s University. He was responsible for the text, supervising the writing that was based on published work and interviews.
Lucius O’Brien, one of Canada’s top artists of the time, supervised the sketches and engraving. He visited the places illustrated to help bring artistic continuity to work done by other artists.
Elora rates less than five pages of text in Picturesque Canada. Almost two of these are devoted to the First Nations heritage of the area. Grant’s text mentions David Boyle (whom he knew slightly) and the Elora Museum. Most of the balance of the Elora material deals with the first settler in the area, Roswell Matthews, and with William Gilkison and the naming of the village.
Grant also noted that Elora had become a tourist destination: “The romantic glens of Elora have been brought by the rail within three or four hours of Toronto.”
The sketchy treatment of Elora’s scenery in the text of Picturesque Canada is more than offset by the illustrations. There are seven engravings of Elora scenes, only one of which shows any buildings. Most other towns rated only one or two views. Although O’Brien visited the scenes himself, the sketches were done by F.B. Schell. Overall, their style shows a harmonious blend, perhaps excessively romantic, of topography and vegetation.
Picturesque Canada, though an expensive work at the time, enjoyed a good circulation. It helped define Canadian nationalism at the time, and copies of the work became treasured family heirlooms. The words and engravings of Elora formed impressions of Elora in the minds of thousands who never visited the village.
Jeff Ferguson, a local antique dealer, tells me that original editions of the work are not rare, but are still very desirable items. Most copies of the edition in magazine format have been broken up, and the section containing the Elora material is prized by local history buffs.
Published historical writing on Elora began in the 1860s, when J.M. Shaw printed a series of recollections and reminiscences in the Elora Observer in 1866-67. Other editors published similar series in later years, particularly in the 1870s and 1890s. As the earliest pioneers died off, their obituaries began to include historical information, noting the place of the deceased in building the community.
This early historical writing was concerned with names, dates and facts, rather than with conveying a sense of community growth or economic development. The earliest pioneers overshadow later arrivals in this writing, and the oldest families assume the largest place.
Elora’s first major historian, John Connon, was steeped in this tradition, and his work reflects the obsession with the earliest pioneers and their trials and achievements.
His book, The Early History of Elora, Ontario, and Vicinity, was published in book form in 1930, but the material had originally appeared in newspaper columns, in a series between 1906 and 1909, and a later one in 1926. Although the book was reprinted in 1972, copies of the original edition (there were only 400) are much prized.
For anyone interested in economic or community development, Connon’s book is virtually useless. It ignores, or mentions only in passing, the important business figures of the 19th century who actually built the village: J.M. Fraser, John Bain, John Mundell, D.M. Potter, Robert Dalby and a dozen others.
On the other hand, Connon had an obsession with detail. He wrote to every relative of the pioneer families he could find, and carefully sorted out the contradictions and inconsistencies in their stories.
His book contains information that is not available anywhere else, and like his photographs, it will always be considered an invaluable local resource.
Colonel Charles Clarke published his autobiography, Sixty Years in Upper Canada, in 1908. It contains some interesting information and anecdotes on Elora’s early years, but it is disappointing in that Clarke knew, and was personally involved in, much local history that he did not record.
Of the more recent historical writing on Elora, Gerald Killan’s biography of David Boyle, From Artisan to Archaeologist, contains a chapter on Elora’s intellectual life in the 1870s. It helps dispel the notion that small towns such as Elora were dull backwaters, populated by hicks and hayseeds.
Fred Jacob was the son of Elora lawyer John Jacob and the nephew of judge George Drew. In the 1920s, he published a fictional account of Elora in the 1880s, titled Day Before Yesterday. The book aroused a great deal of controversy. Oldtimers made a game of matching the “fictional” characters to real people.
Perhaps more upsetting to some, and to John Connon in particular, was Jacob’s portrayal of village life as class-ridden, with the depiction of some of his characters as phonies, social climbers and backbiters.
This picture contradicted Connon’s emphasis on social harmony, and he accused Jacob of dragging up things that should be glossed over or forgotten.
Though not a bestseller, Day Before Yesterday is still seen occasionally in antiquarian bookstores, and it provides an alternative view of village life to that of John Connon.
David Boyle should also be included among the writers of fiction on Elora. His short work, The Adventures of, or the Ups and Downs of Number 7, is a thinly-disguised history of his years as the teacher at Middlebrook school.
Boyle also wrote articles in Scottish dialect, sometimes on subjects dealing with Elora, under the names of Sandy McTocher and Andrew McSpurtle.
*This column was originally published in the Elora Sentinel on Sept. 21, 1993.
