Month: November 2024

Brown Tom’s School Days, 2nd Edition

Brown Tom’s School Days, 2nd Edition

Glencoe & District Historical Society

Book about Life at Mt. Elgin Residential School, Chippewa of the Thames, a local Indian Residential School.

Books available for sale at The Archives or from the bookseller. University of Manitoba: https://uofmpress.ca/books/brown-toms-schooldays 

The Author: 

Reverend Enos Montour (1898-1985) was a United Church minister and writer from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. 

Over the course of his retirement, Rev. Montour wrote a collection of stories about Mount Elgin Industrial School at the time he attended (ca.1910-1915). Mount Elgin is one the earliest United Church-run Indian Residential Schools and was located on the Chippewas of the Thames First Nation. With the help of Dr. Elizabeth Graham, Montour finished and titled his book Brown Tom’s Schooldays.

With no publisher in sight, photocopies were made and distributed to family members in the early 1980s. This important book is difficult to find today, so Professor McCallum, worked with the University of Manitoba Press,  Dr. Graham, and Montour’s two granddaughters Mary I. Anderson and Margaret Mackenzie, to issue a new edition.  

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“Trial By Fire, 1915″ – from Brown Tom’s Schooldays

By Reverend Enos Montour

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WWI Sacrifice – Private Ellwyne Ballantyne

WWI Sacrifice – Private Ellwyne Ballantyne

Glencoe & District Historical Society

Ellwyne Ballantyne’s twenty-two years of brief, bright life are summed up on a simple plaque attached to a majestic buttonwood tree in Carruthers Corners. When local author CJ Frederick first saw the memorial tree in the rural area just outside of Glencoe, ON, she experienced a keen reverence. “It’s just a dot on a map. I was not prepared for how beautiful the tree was. It looked like it was wearing a cloak; as my mother says, ‘wrapped in a queen’s robe’. Knowing that this tree was dedicated to the life of someone who had given that life in a faraway, long-ago conflict really made me stop and think about remembrance and the enduring nature of love.” Ballantyne’s story had to be told; Frederick was eager to record it.

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