‘MYSTERY’ WAR STORIES REVEALED TOMORROW ON EVE OF REMEMBRANCE DAY
Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com
GRAVENHURST — War is a mystery to most.
Not so much for Judy Humphries.
The Gravenhurst archivist is deeply entrenched in war stories.
Never more so than annually this week of November.
Her research and history of local veterans and their stories is unparalleled.
She has not only laboured long and hard to dig up that past — but importantly to digitally chronicle the life telling of young men and women who will be remembered and honoured in two days’ time.
She knows almost every person who went in to war from Gravenhurst.
And intimately so.
They’re like family to her.
People she for the most part never met, but who are cherished in her heart and soul.
Her war memorial project from a few years ago is almost done.
Humphries is almost done writing the first of two volumes on the 62 men from who died in the First World War who lived in Gravenhurst, Ryde, Morrison and Muskoka townships.
But in delving in to those lives and their stories she unearthed some mysteries surrounding them.
Like, she tells MuskokaTODAY.com: “Why were some names on a new cenotaph of war dead not from Gravenhurst?”
Tomorrow night she plans to reveal all — or at least as much as she is able — and much more that you’ll enjoy in her latest talk entitled “Unravelling a 100-year-old MYSTERY.”
Intriguing?
Why certainly, but you’ll have to log on to the Gravenhurst Library website — [email protected] — to register and receive an invite to another of her illuminating Zoom talks.
Like the one last month on “Swedetown.”
That was the enthralling story of one of Gravenhurst’s early immigrant movements and new commemorative endeavours by the Municipal Heritage Committee (MHC) to honour residents in the community who began to centre their lives west of Bethune Drive in the Philip Street area.
Their stonemasonry handiwork is evident in homes still long-standing across town.
Swedes like the Hansens and dozens of other families who helped stitch the rough-hewn fabric of Europe in to a Canadian mosaic that has become a tapestry worth fighting for — as many did.
Check out the MHC’s commemorative plaque in their memory now up at the Philip Street entrance to Gull Lake Rotary Park. A dedication for it is planned for next year.
Just another of the great stories that exist in the realm of the Gravenhurst Archives and the Gravenhurst Library.
Check it out, it’s a great primer for Thursday’s Remembrance Day services at local legions in Muskoka.
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