Jean Campbell doesn’t just help preserve and promote Mapleton’s history, she plays a part in it.
From the vantage point of her longtime position as clerk in the village of Drayton to her involvement with the Mapleton Historical Society, the Drayton Festival Theatre and various other volunteer activities, Campbell has played an assortment of roles in much of the recent history of her community.
A native of what is now Mapleton Township, Campbell was raised in former Peel Township, where her parents, Wilson and Hulda Cunningham, ran a mixed farming operation.
Despite being rural residents, Campbell and her siblings (two sisters and a brother) went to school in the village, at the Drayton Continuation School, which accommodated students from Grade 1 to 13.
“My maternal grandmother didn’t think I was big enough to walk to Bosworth School, because by the time I went to school we lived on the 12th Concession (two miles away). During the week we boarded with my grandmother and went to school in Drayton,” Campbell recalls.
After completing school, she married Lloyd Campbell, who passed away in 1992, and the couple lived in Kitchener for 17 years. They had five children, two girls and three boys. Their oldest daughter Bonnie, died in 2009. Their other daughter Mary, married Terry Downey and they live in Drayton. Their oldest son, Earl is married to Theresa Downey and resides at Rothsay. Sam married Bonnie McRae and they live in Kitchener. Jim and his wife Melinda live in Cambridge. Amongst them there are eight grandchildren.
“I am fortunate to have great daughters-in-law and son-in-law. We get together at least four times a year for family gatherings, at my house, that one grandson describes as a ‘wall-to-wall people event,’” says Campbell.
In 1971, Jean and Lloyd returned to live in the area.
“I thought I’d like to try my hand at store keeping,” said Campbell, who ran the general store in Alma until 1974, when they sold the building to Paul Noonan who turned it into the present local business, Noonan’s Antiques.
After selling the store, Campbell returned to high school in Fergus to take some business courses. Two of her children were attending the school at the time.
“Their first reaction was ‘We’re very proud of our mother, but please don’t talk to us in the hall.’ That lasted about two weeks and then they needed some money,” she recalls with a laugh.
Campbell’s second stint at high school didn’t last long, as she soon spotted an advertisement for a clerk for the Village of Drayton. She applied and started a 17-year career in municipal administration on Feb. 1, 1975.
Her first year on the job was good preparation for being a part of an amalgamated community, as the old Drayton arena was condemned during a province-wide inspection blitz and the municipality began to work with neighbouring townships to build the current Peel-Maryborough-Drayton (PMD) Arena.
She recalls area councils caught the ear of provincial officials at a conference and managed to convince them southwestern Ontario communities should receive the same percentage of funding – two thirds – as those in Northern Ontario for new facilities built with funds from Wintario, the provincial government’s first venture into the lottery business.
Campbell was also involved as the village installed water and sewer systems, an expensive undertaking she says required a lot of creativity on the part of the local council.
“We convinced quite a few people in the village to pre-pay and the village paid the same interest as Canada Savings Bonds and that’s how we convinced the provincial government that we could afford to do it,” she said.
Although she did take a municipal clerk-treasurer course by correspondence after landing the job, Campbell notes there was much more to be learned through on-the-job experiences.
“She’s a self-taught clerk as most of them were in those days,” notes John Green, who was reeve of Drayton during much of Campbell’s tenure with the municipality.
“She was always pretty forward about getting information from others, including from provincial mentors, if she didn’t have it herself.”
Campbell said, “I learned an lot that first year as a clerk.”
One of those early experiences, setting up a filing system for the village, may have helped stoke her interest in local history. Her predecessors on the job, she recalls, “had a unique filling system that consisted of brown envelopes with things in them. So it was quite a lesson. My first three months I think was spent figuring out what was history and what was current.”
In 1990, Campbell became part of another piece of local history.
“Alex Mustakas appeared on the scene wanting to start a theatre in the town hall. In order to get that going there was a committee of council struck and as clerk-treasurer I became secretary treasurer of Drayton Festival Theatre,” said Campbell.
In addition to an administrative role, Campbell also worked with the theatre organization, heading up the wardrobe department. When it came to volunteering to make the theatre work, “We all did it,” she recalls.
“I remember watching an archival film of the first show at Drayton Festival Theatre,” she said. “In those days the equipment was just a video camera and it shot right through intermission and here was John Green walking up and down the aisle counting heads to make sure we had enough money. I get a chuckle out of every time I think of it.”
These days, Campbell is less involved with the theatre.
“I’ve been greeting for a few years, but I’ve backed off. It’s hard work backstage.”
Even before the professional organization was established, Campbell was a part of the local theatre scene as a member of the Drayton Community Players, a group that enjoyed considerable audience support in its day.
“They were getting such good crowds – I mean I was in the group and who wouldn’t want to go and see their clerk-treasurer making a fool of herself,” she quipped.
In 2006, Campbell was invited to join the Mapleton Historical Society, which had been set up after amalgamation by founding members Paul Day, Marilyn Streeter, Debbie Oxby, Enid Whale and Lori Flewwelling.
“They were a nucleus who said we have to preserve our history,” says Campbell, who was pleased to join the group.
“I’ve always enjoyed history – the history of what people do and what they’ve accomplished – not necessarily the dates, thank you very much.”
Among Campbell’s first duties with the group was putting out a quarterly Newsletter, which she typed and mailed out. She spent a term as president of the society and was involved in establishing a space for the group at the local library.
“When I was president we asked for space in Drayton public library and we did get a small storage area in the basement and a big display case on the main floor.”
Perhaps one of Campbell’s most enduring contributions to local history can be found within the pages of Mapleton’s own Newspaper The Community News.
Streeter had started writing a weekly column on local history for the publication entitled Mapleton Musings, a task Campbell took over when Streeter faced a long recovery from an illness.
Campbell said the group wanted to keep the column going and asked, “Would someone coordinate others’ writing?“
It hasn’t exactly worked out that way, as Campbell has written the vast majority of the Musings columns, but she notes that others do contribute columns.
“What happens too is, because my name is known in the village and in the general community, I’ll get a knock at the door and ‘here I found this and I didn’t really want to throw it out if it was of any use.’ And often it is,” she explains.
For Campbell, the community feedback she receives tells her the columns are appreciated.
“I do a lot of reading. I do a lot of research. Some of it’s from my memories of childhood things. Interestingly enough, when I mention something about my family or something I remember, I get a lot more response from the public,” she points out.
“Just about a month ago, I wrote about a black settler in Peel and I made a comment that his farm maybe was now part of Yatton. I got a response all right – it isn’t. So I put in a correction the next week. So that’s fine. That’s great. It means people are looking at it and saying, ‘Well that’s not right’ – so you can correct your impression.”
Campbell feels the columns, and the work of the historical society in general, will prove even more vital to future generations.
“I think it’s important that my children and grandchildren and great grandchildren if I ever have any, can connect with this township.”
The columns, she says, also help the society connect with the public.
“It keeps the Mapleton Historical Society in front of people, so if they do run across some old documents or pictures they might give them to us, rather than throw them out. So it certainly helps in gathering information.”
Campbell has also been a longtime member of the Drayton Rotary Club and has served with the local agricultural society, Drayton Citizen’s Association and the Mapleton Cemetery Committee. She continues to act as a volunteer driver for Wellington Community Services, taking people who don’t drive or have access to a vehicle to necessary appointments.
That lengthy resume of volunteer work led to Campbell being presented with a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012. At the November presentation ceremony in Arthur, Perth-Wellington MPP Randy Pettapiece called Campbell, “an outstanding volunteer in the Township of Mapleton.
Green agrees with the assessment, noting, “Jean is probably one of the best people you can have for getting things done in a practical and efficient manner.”
While appreciative of the honour, Campbell wasn’t comfortable being centred out.
“I kind of thought there’s lots of others that are doing just as much, that weren’t recognized, that are kind of under the radar.”
In typically modest fashion, she deflected the praise to others.
“It’s probably best said that I maybe represented the volunteers of Mapleton … I certainly didn’t set out to receive any recognition, although I’m proud to be recognized and proud of my family that do volunteer work in other areas.”
