Shawn MacWha

Newspapers provide a space for local voices to be heard

Courtesy BAnQ

By Shawn MacWha

Local Journalism Initiative

During the past two decades our country has seen a drastic decline in the number of local newspapers. In 2023 alone over 100 daily and weekly papers across the country ceased circulation, taking with them the voices of entire communities. In many ways this sad trend marks the closing of a door that was first opened roughly 250 years ago when a nascent publishing industry first brought word of the outside world to a growing population hungry for knowledge.

In 1752 the Halifax Gazette became the first newspaper in Canada. It was soon followed by daily publications in other major centres such as Montréal, Québec City, and Kingston. During the early years of Canadian media the price and complexity of printing presses limited the number of newspapers being published but by the 1850s costs had come down to the point that a newspaper could generally be viable in almost any small town or city. Much like today’s oft-partisan publications, most early Canadian journals assumed an overtly political viewpoint, telling their readers at the outset if they supported liberal, conservative, national or regional viewpoints. As such, many larger towns boasted two or three newspapers in order to address the varying religious or ideological perspectives of their readers.

Courtesy McCord Stewart Museum
Mechanical Printing Press c1850

In the Eastern Townships there were several small privately-owned newspapers published around the middle of the nineteenth century such as the The Canadian Patriot which was produced in Stanstead, the Waterloo Advertiser and Eastern Townships Advocate and The Sherbrooke Gazette. One of the lesser known of these long-lost newspapers was The Canadian Times which was a weekly bulletin published in Sherbrooke between 1855 and 1858. Billed as a political, agricultural, commercial and literary journal its first issue was published just over 170 years ago, on Jan. 4, 1855. The editors of the paper proclaimed at the outset that “While avowing ourselves the strenuous advocates of religious as well as civil liberty, in its most liberal sense, nothing sectarian will be admitted into our columns.” Instead, the paper sought to provide its readers with a wide range of reporting on matters of general intelligence, literature and farming.

The newspaper’s inaugural edition led with the first chapter of a serialized novel entitled “Maretimo” by then famous British travel writer Bayle St. John. It offered readers a tale of mystery and adventure set against the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea, something that must have been a very welcome distraction from the cold January evenings of 1850s Canada. Other subjects covered in that first issue included a story on the progress of the Crimean War, a (one would hope) useful article “On making and saving manure,” and a short note advising people that the little town of Bytown had just been renamed as “The City of Ottawa.”

Courtesy McCord Stewart Museum
Sherbrooke, in the middle of the 19th century

Printed by John Edwards in the Beckett Building in downtown Sherbrooke, the newspaper was owned by Ritchie and Company and its first editor was P.W. Ritchie. Its business model was typical of that of most newspapers then and now; income was derived primarily from advertising revenue supplemented by paid subscriptions. To that effect advertisers were charged $1.00 per square of 16 lines for the first instance, and 25 cents for all subsequent publications while readers paid an annual subscription rate of $2.00, which was reduced to a very modest $1.50 if the amount was given in advance. Incomes must have been modest though, given that Sherbrooke’s population at this time was only about 3,000 people.

Nonetheless The Canadian Times operated under these arrangements for most of the next four years, until October 1858 it was purchased by H. Jewitt and Company and George Bottom assumed its editorship. Wanting the re-brand his new newspaper Jewitt ceased publishing it under the name of The Canadian Times at the end of 1858, with the final edition being released on December 30, 1858 after a run of 209 issues. True to its literary roots the last front page featured a story by famed American abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Courtesy BAnQ
Final issue, June 30, 1859

The following week, on Jan.6, 1859 the paper re-emerged with very little fanfare as The Sherbrooke Times although beyond a changed name little differed from the original format. Indeed, even the volume and issue numbers of The Sherbrooke Times picked up where The Canadian Times had left off, with the first issue of the former being counted as issue number 210. A new name, however, could not alter the economics of the publication and on June 30, 1859 The Sherbrooke Times shut down following the resignation of its editor. The cause of the paper’s closure would be sadly familiar to the publishers and editors of today, with George Bottom rhetorically asking “Surely if a man devotes his talents which his Maker has given him to their legitimate use, he has the right to expect recompense for his labors.” He goes on to add that the demands of the business, and the time which it took away from his family and his general interests, were not justified by the “scant remuneration” that he received for his efforts. Thus ended the idea of The Canadian and Sherbrooke Times. Plus ça change.

Journalism has sometimes been credited with producing the rough draft of history, and it is often local newspapers that capture the first sparks of what may someday be great events. And as this newspaper has repeatedly shown, even small and relatively out of the way places like the Eastern Townships have been responsible for their share of historical achievements. That is why it is so important for local voices to have a place to be heard. It was important in the 1850s, just as this country was just starting to coalesce around an idea of unity, and it is important in the 2020s when we are faced with threats of disinformation, the erosion of our social cohesion, and the rise of artificial intelligence. It is important so that we know where we came from, who we are, and where we collectively need to be going.

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Aviation firsts in the Eastern Townships

Photo courtesy
Watching the airship, Sherbrooke Exposition 1907

By Shawn MacWha

Local Journalism Initiative

Most people familiar with the Eastern Townships know that Bombardier, one of the largest civilian aircraft manufacturers in the world, was founded in the town of Valcourt in 1942. What is perhaps less well known is the fact that residents of the Eastern Townships were often among the first people in Canada to witness several aviation firsts in this country. Indeed, starting in the middle of the 19th century local citizens followed the exploits, and accidents, of early “aeronauts” with the same attention that the first astronauts were watched more than 100 years later.

In August, 1856 Eugène Godard, a famous French aeronaut, arrived in Montreal following a tour of the United States. He placed advertisements for seamstresses in local newspapers and, using their labour, oversaw the fabrication of the first balloon made in Canada at that city’s Bonsecours Market. Aptly named “Canada” the craft was 42 feet (12.8 metres) in diameter and had a capacity of 36,860 cubic feet (1044 cubic metres). Using this balloon Godard made three flights from Montreal during the month of September, including the first flight to carry any passengers in Canada when, on Sept. 8, Godard went aloft with three men and floated eastwards from Montreal to the little parish of Saint Mathias near the town of Chambly. While Godard and his balloon never made it closer to the Eastern Townships than the Richelieu River residents of the region were nonetheless deeply interested in his exploits of the air and followed them long after he departed Quebec. In March, 1859, for example, the Sherbrooke Times carried a fascinating story about a Godard expedition in Belgium wherein the unfortunate pioneer found himself being assaulted by a dissatisfied customer 5,000 feet over the countryside.

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Crewed flight finally came to the Eastern Townships in early September, 1888 when Professor William Hogan of Jackson, Michigan was contracted by the organizers of the Sherbrooke Exposition to make two balloon ascents during the fair. In addition to performing a trapeze act from a bar hanging beneath his balloon Hogan also made what was almost certainly the first-ever parachute descent in the Province of Quebec (and only the second-even in Canada) from over the fairgrounds on September 4 when he jumped from a height of almost 6,000 feet and floated to the ground.

Following Hogan’s breathtaking performance ballooning became a regular attraction at the Sherbrooke Exposition and by the early 1890s another famous aeronaut, Professor Charles Walcott, was a regular visitor to the region demonstrating both his balloon and his dare-devil parachute jumps from it. At times he also performed “parachute races” from his balloon to the ground with his partner Nellie LeMount. Walcott was a star attraction to the 1894 Sherbrooke Exposition, at which time he also assisted local businessman Seth Nutter, who went on the found the Silver Spring Brewery, by distributing thousands of Nutter’s business cards by throwing them from his balloon as he floated over the townships. Sadly, in October, 1895 Walcott was seriously injured during a parachuting accident in Venezuela where he shattered his ankles and pelvis and broke a femur, several ribs and his spine, thus demonstrating the danger of early excursions into the sky.

The Sherbrooke Exposition was once again the showcase for new flight technology when Lincoln Beachey, an American aviation pioneer, made the first dirigible flight anywhere in Canada on Sept. 4, 1907. Residents and visitors alike were enthralled with Beachey’s machine, with the Montreal Gazette reporting that Beachey took off from the fairgrounds and “sailed over the city for a distance of about a mile and a half and returned again to the grounds. He then circled around the grounds a couple of times, steering his ship first in one direction, then directly in the opposite, demonstrating his perfect control of it.”

Courtesy BANQ
George Mestach c1907

On Jan. 26, 1912 it was announced that the planning committee of the Eastern Townships Agricultural Association had secured the attendance of noted French aviator George Mestach and his Borel monoplane at its upcoming fall exhibition. This was at a time when most Canadians had yet to see an airplane and there was much excitement about the prospects of seeing such a craft. While this would be the first plane to fly over the Eastern Townships it was actually not to be the first airplane to visit the area. In mid-July, 1912 an airplane owned by American aviator Harry Atwood was towed through the region behind an automobile (itself a relatively new sight) on its way from Montreal to Newport, Vermont.

In what was clearly the highlight of Sherbrooke’s 1912 exposition, residents and visitors finally got to witness Mestach’s aircraft take flight from East Sherbrooke on Monday, Sept. 2. It was eagerly reported that “His machine sailed high in the air in front of the grandstand, and was absolutely under control of the airman at the helm. He circles round and round, and finally came to ground without the least trouble.” The flight on Sept. 3 was even more spectacular as Mestach flew over the city, allowing thousands of people not at the fairgrounds to witness his craft. Leaving Sherbrooke three days later Mestach proceeded to Montreal where he engaged in a two mile (3.2 kilometre)  race with an automobile and a motorcycle. 

While the pace of aeronautical innovation may appear to have slowed since the early days of the Sherbrooke Exhibition there are still people in this area who reach for the heights just as the first aeronauts did more than 100 years ago. Sherbrooke native Vincent Beaudry, for example, was among the top 32 candidates for the latest round of astronaut selection by the Canadian Space Agency in 2017. Later, in 2022, University of Sherbrooke scientist Myrian Lemelin received funding from the Canadian Space Agency for a project to look for water-ice on the south pole of the moon. In this way people from the Eastern Townships continue to stand at the forefront of modern aviation, even at it carries us away from this earth.

Photo courtesy
Montreal Gazette, August 14, 1907, p. 7

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The first pint

George B. Capel, 1863. Photo: McCord Stewart Museum

By Shawn MacWha

Local Journalism Initiative

When most people think of Lennoxville and beer, their minds likely turn, perhaps a little fuzzily, to the Golden Lion (or, if you prefer, Le Lion d’Or). First opened in 1986 this pub was at the vanguard of Canada’s microbrewery revolution. Since that time, it has served locals, students, and visitors alike with a variety of bitters, lagers, stouts and ales to sooth the soul and fire the imagination. But long before this institution crafted its first pint, another brewery also made fresh beer for hard-working and thirsty locals.

The Lennoxville Brewery was one of the very first beer makers to be established in the Eastern Townships. Opened by British immigrants Thomas Austin and George Slack in 1837 it was located on four acres of land between what is now Queen Street and the Massawippi River in lot 12, range 11 of Ascot Township. Powered by a water wheel, the brewery pulled the water needed for the brewing process directly from the river via a series of pipes. Inside the brew house there was a large cast iron kiln to dry barley, a malt mill, and other vessels necessary to the art of making beer including two large copper kettles and all of the required cooling and storage equipment. Local wheat, barley, hops and clean water were all readily available and the brewery had an impressive capacity of 1,260 litres per batch.

This was, however, a difficult time for a small-scale brewery to open in the Eastern Townships. The region had not yet been reached by any railways and there was only a rudimentary network of roads and trails. As such it was both difficult and expensive to transport beer out of the area to the larger markets of Montreal, Quebec City or the United States. Additionally, the local population was insufficient to permit the business to grow. Only three years earlier, in 1834, there were fewer than 200 people living in Sherbrooke and while the influx of immigrants to the area following the founding of the British American Land Company undoubtedly brought in additional customers there were simply not enough local drinkers to allow Austin and Slack to make any money. To complicate matters, at least from the perspective of aspiring brewers, there was an active temperance movement in Canada during this time committed to riding the country of alcoholic drink. In November and December 1841, for example, R.D. Wadsworth of the Montreal Temperance Society toured the Eastern Townships and while he made many converts to his cause he also noted that the recent establishment of the brewery in Lennoxville had undermined his efforts.

Lennoxville near the time of its first brewery. Photo: BANQ

In the face of these pressures the owners were actively trying to sell their brewery as early as June 1841, billing it as “a desirable opportunity” for “emigrants and others” in the Quebec (City) Gazette. Unfortunately for them, they were unable to find a buyer and the enterprise went out of business in the summer of 1843. By this point Austin had moved to St. Johns (Saint-Jean-sur Richelieu) where he was working as a trader while Slack had relocated to Eaton. In an attempt to recoup at least some of their investment the defunct brewery was auctioned off by James Scott at the Merrick’s Hotel in Lennoxville on March 11, 1843 and was purchased by Charles Anderson Richardson, the town’s postmaster, for the modest sum of ₤213 (approximately $46,000 today). This sale included the brewery, granary, stables, all equipment necessary for the production of beer and the land upon which it sat. Alas, for reasons that are lost, Richardson could not pay for his newly acquired brewery and the property was seized by Sheriff Charles Whitcher later that autumn. The site was once again put up for auction at Whitcher’s office in Sherbrooke on October 10, 1843 at which time it was purchased by G. Weston who then went on to sell “Lennoxville Beer” throughout the region for the next 15 years.

In 1858 Weston sold the brewery to George B. Capel, a native of Salisbury, England who had just immigrated to the Eastern Townships following a stint in India. Soon after acquiring the brewery Capel partnered with Robert Atto, a local farmer also from England, to run the business. In what must have been a great relief to the drinking public Capel and Atto ran an advertisement in Sherbrooke’s The Canadian Times newspaper that they would “spare no pains to keep up a constant supply of Good Ale and Beer” to the area. Capel, it should be noted, was a man of keen entrepreneurial spirit and less than a year after buying the brewery he also partnered with local soap manufacturer E. Moe and started selling soap directly from his brew house. Much more importantly, in 1863 Capel discovered copper on his farm south of Lennoxville and lost no time in developing what would become the Capelton Copper Mine. He was also instrumental in founding a number of other companies during this period including the Magog Petroleum Company in 1866 and the Dominion Gold Mining Company the following year before he sold his various businesses and returned to England in 1868.

It is not clear if Capel’s departure from Canada marked the end of the Lennoxville Brewery or not. The last mention of the brewery in any Sherbrooke area newspaper occurred in the summer of 1859, long before Capel returned to England. The Coaticook Historical Society, however, has suggested that the brewery was in business until sometime around 1875. This is supported somewhat by a record of a Thomas Guinan working as a barber at the “old brewery” in Lennoxville in 1876. It would certainly seem that the brew house was closed by then, but that the reference to the former establishment was still recent enough to be meaningful. Regardless, whenever its closure occurred it did not appear to be a newsworthy event which is a pity given how important the enterprise likely was to the earliest inhabitants of Lennoxville. Slàinte Mhath.

George B. Capel, 1861. Photo: McCord Stewart Museum

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A warm welcome for immigrant artist brought rich rewards

Courtesy McCord Stewart Museum

By Shawn MacWha

Local Journalism Initiative

For hundreds of years the Eastern Townships has been a destination for refugees. Whether it was the first Abenaki people fleeing early European incursions along the coast of Maine, United Empire Loyalists following the Crown northwards, or displaced Scottish Highlanders evicted from their ancestral crofts, people have been seeking new beginnings in this land for generations.

Robert Scott Duncanson was such a man. Born in the tiny hamlet of Fayette in the Finger Lakes region of New York sometime in 1821 Duncanson spent much of his childhood in Monroe, Michigan just south of Detroit. In 1840 he moved to Cincinnati and it was there that he emerged as the first internationally recognized African-American artist. Largely self-taught he first practised his art as a young man by making copies of popular prints while earning a living as a house painter. Later, he progressed to portraits and still-life paintings, gaining commissions from some of the more liberal minded citizens of the time who refused to let the colour of his skin mask his inherent talent. Towards the end of the 1840s Duncanson turned to landscape painting and was a founding member of the Ohio River Valley technique which sought to capture the soft beauty of America’s pastoral scenes. By the 1850s many considered Duncanson to be the premier landscape artist in the United States.

Despite these talents Duncanson faced an unceasing tide of racism during his time in Ohio. As a frontier city on the border between slave and free states Cincinnati saw major race riots in 1829, 1836 and 1841 and these tensions remained part of the city’s fabric throughout Duncanson’s time in Ohio. As art historian Joseph Ketner noted in a 1993 “A major portion of Cincinnati’s booming economy depended upon southern trade, forcing Duncanson to face the spectre of slavery daily in the markets, at the docks, and across the river from his home.”

Courtesy

These tensions were only heightened during the American Civil War and in 1863 Duncanson finally decided to leave his homeland and seek a more tolerant audience. He intended to go to Europe to exhibit his works but first stopped in Montreal which he had visited the previous year. Upon his return to that city he was so warmly greeted by the local artistic community that he cancelled his European plans and took up residence in Canada. In September, 1863 he mounted his first serious exhibition in his new homeland, showing his popular paintings Land of the Lotus Eaters and Western Tornado in the home of local photographer William Notman.

For the next two years Duncanson used Montreal as a base of operations as he travelled throughout Central Canada collecting material for future paintings. The Eastern Townships were a favoured destination for him during this time, and his journeys to this area ultimately resulted in some of his most beautiful paintings including Mount Orford and Owl’s Head Mountain. The first of these landscapes was last sold in 2005 when it was purchased at auction for the impressive sum of $296,000 US dollars. The latter work, Owl’s Head Mountain, now forms part of the collection of the National Gallery of Canada along with several of Duncanson’s other paintings. Other notable works from Duncanson’s time in Canada included Mount Royal, Waterfall on Montmorency, and St. Ann’s River. He also produced a number of other major works during this time not associated with the Canadian landscape including his stunningly beautiful Vale of Kashmir. This work showed the influence of British poetry upon his painting, with Alfred Tennyson, John Keats and William Wordsworth being cited as inspirations for his sweeping landscapes.

Not content to merely paint the local countryside, Duncanson also became an important mentor for several emerging Canadian painters during his time in Montreal. The most successful of these artists was Aaron Allan Edson, a native of the Eastern Townships who became a leading Canadian landscape artist himself and was, in 1880, a founder of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Another close associate at the time was Prussian born Canadian artist Otto Reinhold Jacobi.

Owl’s Head. Courtesy National Gallery of Canada

Following the end of the Civil War Duncanson left Montreal to make his much-delayed trip to Europe, after which he returned to Cincinnati in 1866. He continued to paint for the next several years but by the early 1870s his health was starting to decline. In the autumn of 1872 he suffered from a nervous breakdown while preparing for an exhibition in Detroit and was confined to a nearby “insane asylum.” For the next two months he was beset with dementia and the belief that he was possessed by the soul of deceased artist, with some speculating that his condition was the result of lead poisoning from his earlier work as a house painter in the 1830s and 1840s.

Duncanson died in Detroit on December 21st, 1872 and was buried alongside his parents and several siblings at the family plot in the Woodland Cemetery in Monroe, Michigan. In a sad and troubling sign of the times his obituary in the Chicago Tribune the following week sought to downplay his work, noting that “It added a special feature of interest to his paintings that Mr. Duncanson had negro blood in his veins, and his pictures were, therefore looked upon with more or less of curiosity, and this feat sometimes gained for them a sale which could not always have been secured for them by their real artistic merit…”  Fortunately, a much more enlightened view of Duncanson’s skills holds today, and he is recognized for his fine artworks in leading museums around the world.

While Duncanson’s time in the Eastern Townships was fleeting, limited only to short expeditions to paint the local landscape, his mark on the region is noteworthy. During his short time in Canada he not only shared the beauty of this land with a global audience, but he also helped a new generation of Canadian artists to do the same. No small feat for a disheartened refugee 160 years ago.

Robert S. Duncanson, Waterfall on Mont-Morency, 1864 .Courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum

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The tiny town of Weedon yielded supplies of copper, zinc, silver, and gold

Weedon, c1950s. Courtesy BANQ

By Shawn MacWha

Local Journalism Initiative

Following the end of the War of 1812 in North America and the Napoleonic Wars in Europe the British government decided to set aside large swaths of Lower Canada to provide the soldiers who had fought in those conflicts with farms. Weedon Township, located 50 kilometres northeast of Sherbrooke, was one such tract and although it was surveyed in the spring of 1818 no veterans came to the area until Major Toussaint Hubert Goddu was granted 202 acres on May 4, 1835. Goddu, accompanied by two friends, moved from his farm at Sainte-Marie-de-Mannoir outside of Montreal to his new home that summer, but seeing the loneliness of the place promptly turned around and returned home.

The township remained empty until 1841 when Germain Biron arrived at the site of what would later become the town of Weedon. His family lived there, alone in the wilderness, until 1847 when they were finally joined by several other French-Canadian families who were seeking opportunities away from the crowded seigneuries along the St. Lawrence River. These new arrivals included the Brière, Fortin, Fontaine and Gauthier families and together they formed the basis of a new community.

Courtesy The Montreal Gazette, March 26, 1858

In August, 1848 Pierre Founier constructed the first saw mill in the area and later, in 1854, the town’s first chapel was erected. It was also around this time that the government began to offer over 12,000 acres of Crown Land for sale along the First, Second, Third, fourth and Fifth ranges of Weedon Township for the astounding price of 60 cents an acre. Fuelled by the new families coming in to open farms on these lands a growing settlement was established around the church and saw mill and on June 21, 1886 the village of Weedon was officially incorporated.   

By the turn of the century Weedon was a thriving commercial hub of almost 400 people which included two sawmills, a hotel, a creamery, a small carriage factory, and a bustling station on the Quebec Central Railway. As with so many other towns in the Eastern Townships it was the railway which formed that backbone of the community, connecting it and its products to the wider world. When James Miller, the local station agent, discovered rich copper and sulphur containing pyrite deposits about six kilometres east of Weedon in 1908 it was the proximity of the railway that permitted the development of a profitable mine. 

Hunting in Weedon, late 1940s. Courtesy BANQ

As it so happened these deposits were the largest ones in Canada east of the Great Lakes and mining operations began at this site in 1913 under the direction of the East Canada Smelting Company, which leased the project to the Weedon Mining Company the following year. Over the next eight years the mine produced almost 585,000 tons of ore containing an average of 3.5 per cent copper and 40 per cent sulphur. After a failed experience with trucks, the ore was shipped from the mine to Weedon Station by means of an ingenious aerial tramway. From there it was shipped directly to markets in the United States where it was used primarily in the production of copper and sulphuric acid, a key industrial chemical. The mine closed in May, 1921 following the discovery of larger and more economical pyrite deposits in Texas and Louisiana and two years later the pumps were turned off, allowing the shafts to flood.

This was not, however, the end. As 1930 the provincial government had recognized that the mine appeared to contain sufficient copper reserves to warrant a salvage operation to reopen the pit. Unfortunately, this did not happen until the 1950s when, as the Montreal Gazette noted, a “boomlet” of mining activity occurred in the Eastern Townships that saw several decommissioned mines brought back into production in order to meet the post-war demand for minerals. One of these facilities was the old Weedon Mine and in February, 1951 the Weedon Pyrite and Copper Company began the process of bringing the old mine back into production in order to access the estimated 500,000 tons of viable ore that still remained in the ground. Tests showed that this ore averaged 1.5 per cent zinc, 2.5 per cent copper and 35 per cent sulphur content, more than enough to make the effort to recover it worthwhile.

Weedon Ferry circa 1920s. Courtesy BANQ

The reopening of the mine was facilitated by the fact that the original operations had seen the construction of three inclined shafts that accessed 13 subterranean levels. It was the existence of this infrastructure that made reopening the mine economically viable as the most significant work required to access the ore was to de-water the old mine. This took place throughout the summer of 1951 and the flooded shafts were pumped out at a rate of about 70 feet per week. Once reopened in 1952 the mine remained in service again until 1960 when a series of cave-ins halted production. By this time the original deposits discovered by Miller had yielded over 19 million pounds of copper, five million pounds of zinc, 113,500 ounces of silver, 11,000 ounces of gold and 200,000 tons of sulphur bearing pyrite. The mine was briefly reopened again in 1969, this time by the Sullivan Mining Group before finally closing for good in 1973.

With the mine closed the focus of the area’s economy returned, once again, to the agriculture and forestry that it has relied upon 100 years earlier. For the most part, that remains the case even today, although over the past few decades tourism has become an increasingly important economic driver. Today Weedon is a thriving town of about 3,000 people living within Le Haut-Saint-Francois Regional County Municipality. An overwhelmingly francophone community its historical path has taken it a long way from its intended destination as a home for retired British soldiers. But such is the nature of the Eastern Townships, and the manner in which First Nations, English, French and more recent arrivals have all come together to form the rich cultural tapestry that runs so deeply through these hills.

Weedon c1900. Courtesy BANQ

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