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Local History Collection Jean Keffer
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Bond Head Pioneer Parade

Photograph of the Bond Head Pioneer Parade on July 1, 1967, featuring the "Bath Night on the Farm 1867" float from the Bond Head United Church Sunday School group. On the float (from left to right): Dorothy and Dawn Culbert, Mary Stevenson, Susan Glassford, Hilda and Ruthie McKay, Jean K, Glen Brethet, Steven Reynolds, Dot Grimshaw, Tommy Hamilton.

Part of Jean and Rob Keffer's centennial album

Jean Keffer

Bond Head Pioneer Parade - back view

Photograph of the Bond Head Pioneer Parade on July 1, 1967, featuring the "Bath Night on the Farm 1867" float from Bond Head United Church Sunday School. On the float (from left to right): Dorothy and Dawn Culbert, Mary Stevenson, Susan Glassford, Hilda and Ruthie McKay, Jean K, Glen Brethet, Steven Reynolds, Dot Grimshaw, Tommy Hamilton.

Part of Jean and Rob Keffer's centennial album

Jean Keffer

History of the Gwillimburys

"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."

Gary Lamb