Merrickville Alloy Factory
Village Metalsmiths – Alloy Foundry Company Limited was originally founded in 1840. It has operated continuously ever since and is, therefore, Canada’s oldest foundry....
Methodist Church and Cemetery, Clothier and James Streets
As so often in North Grenville, some of the more interesting and historic locations are now empty sites where once there stood the earliest...
William Tutin Thomas, Architect of St. James
by Doug MacDonald
A few years ago, Dr. George Fisher mentioned that St. James Anglican Church, Kemptville, had been designed by an architect of importance....
The Wharf
by James Clothier
When the Town of Kemptville celebrated its 150th anniversary in 1957, the Kemptville Women’s Institute collected a great deal of information about...
Ku Klux Klan in Smith’s Falls
Racism and bigotry is not unknown in Canada, although we often like to think that we’re in a better place in that regard. Sometimes...
The push to amalgamate
Looking back on twenty years of amalgamation, it is easy to assume that what we see now is what was always going to be;...
The mystery of Tom Chu
There has been some discussion on our Facebook page recently about the grave in the Kemptville Union Cemetery where a Chinese man, Tom Chu,...
Vigorous encouragement
The story of Confederation had reached a dead end. New Brunswick had voted against the entire scheme, and, without New Brunswick as a physical...
A tale of two Buildings
by Tricia Habberjam
The year is 1875, and Oxford Mills is a thriving community clustered around the South Branch of the Rideau River in Eastern...
The central role of cheese
At the turn of the Twentieth Century, cheese factories were a major part of the Ontario economy, and North Grenville and the surrounding area...