"When Jean Keffer asked me to sign her petition to keep Gwillimbury in the Town name, I did so with the following in mind...Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Gwillim was an aide-de-camp of General Wolfe. He was with Wolfe when the General died on the Plains of Abraham in 1759. His daughter Elizabeth married John Graves Simcoe; the rest is history. My own connection to the "Gwillburys" began in 1803, when my 5G-Grandfather, John Eves, a Quaker from Pennsylvania, built one of the first settler dwellings, after he was patented with Lot 108 in West Gwillimbury. He is credited with the first industry in the "Gwillimburys", when he built a sawmill on the Holland River soon after. I even found reference to North Gwillimbury in the 1881 census where my Great-Great grandparents Thomas Lamb and Rachel Eves briefly lived. When I wrote on the Millenium Clock Monument, with assistance from George Jackson, I tried to balance the story of the Town and Township, so that one can see the relationship that existed, where we were intertwined socially, economically and emotionally. My wife Julie and I both spent our formative years in West Gwillimbury, and our two sons are the 9th generation in Ontario as descended from those original settlers on Lot 108. The name Bradford West Gwillimbury may be long and unwieldy, but historically and emotionally it is ours alone."
Lily Oddie Munro, Minister of Culture and Communication addressing the crowd at the opening ceremonies of the new Bradford Public Library. Background L-R: George Jackson, Bud Brown, Padre Hopkin (Trinity Anglican Church), Bruce Owen (Librarian), Mayor William de Peuter and Adrienne Price (Librarian).
Barbara Verney, Zelma Fuller and George Jackson thanking Lieutenant Governor Onley and presenting him with a copy of the Bradford West Gwillimbury Local History Associations book "Governor Simcoe Slept Here; The Legacy of West Gwillimbury" at the official unveiling of the Elizabeth Gwillim Simcoe Statue.
This edition of the Bradford Witness is located in the Local History Room, and is in particular a very noteworthy edition. The printing of this edition included many photographs of local businessmen, houses, storefronts, churches, and of the main streets. It also included mini-biographical articles of the people included, acting as a local history gold-mine for Bradford's early 1900s. We have included some of these photographs and articles here, though a full copy of the text and photographs was reorganized thematically by the Bradford West Gwillimbury Historical Society in 1997.
A newspaper article about the unveiling of a planning model for a new Bradford Public Library at 100 Holland Court. Included in the article is a photograph of the building model and (L-R): Dennis Roughley (Town Councillor), Eleanor Sherbo ( Library Board Chairperson), Bill Lett (Architect), Wilson Shut (Architect's Assistant), George Jackson, Peggy Chorneki, Ron Quinton, Adrienne Price (Librarian), Bill de Peuter (Mayor) and Sandy Hudson (Town Reeve).
"IT WAS happy a time for all last Monday night when a model of Bradford's new library was unveiled to the public..."
