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PASSING OF THE PIONEERS
[Owen Sound Sun Times]
[The Welland Tribune and Telegraph, 26 April 1921]
Every few days one reads with regret, and often with a sense of personal loss, of those who came in the early years to the town, or to some of the townships round about, and contributed through their lives to the making of the town a city, and the townships among the finest in the county or Province.
Of them, there appears often but a brief biographical note, giving little beyond a bare outline of a life bravely and worthily lived. It seems a pity that there should not be made and preserved in every municipality, at least a worthy sketch of such lives, in recognition of the contribution they made in their day to the general welfare of the community. Such a record would in the course of time furnish materials for historical sketches. They would be an incentive to the next generation to do as well or better than the previous one. They would develop civic consciousness and civic pride. They would help set a standard that no one would care to fall short of, and many would try to surpass. The rising generation would emulate the virtues and achievements of those who went before and blazed the way, and made it easier for those who came after to go further and do better, even, than they had been able to do.
When one thinks of the handicaps of the earlier days and how bravely and cheerfully the first and even the earlier settlers faced their tasks, and how heroically they stayed with it, one feels ashamed to grouch and whine when one has to deny one’s self this or that, and even sometimes to be content with a horse when one’s father or grandfather was thankful for-sometimes indeed proud of-a good yoke of oxen. There were compensations even in the earlier years. There were fewer diversions and distractions. More time was spent socially. Fewer books were read, but they were more carefully read. There were fewer religious services, but they were on the whole more highly prized. Clothing was plainer and coarser, but it wore longer, and one didn’t feel quite so embarrassed if he wasn’t able to buy a new suit or hat every year. It seems a pity, a shame that the stories of pioneer life should not be written, before all the pioneers have passed, with all the wealth of literary material they have stored in their memories of the past. Local papers, perhaps without exception, would be glad to publish any such sketches if brief, graphic and artistically true-real pen-pictures of real life.
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