By Ruth Potter
Thirty-two people piled onto a school bus on Saturday morning in Shawville to embark on a bus tour of Clarendon led by local historian Jo-Anne Brownlee.
The free bus trip was an anniversary event organized to celebrate 20 years of the Shawville-Clarendon Library and Pontiac Archives at their current location at 356 Main Street.
Brownlee said she was pleased to see all generations participate in the three-and-a-half-hour tour.
St. Matthew’s Anglican Church in Charteris opened its doors especially for the tour. Reverend Susan Lewis said she heard from participants that they appreciated how well the church had been cared for and preserved.
At Little Red Wagon Winery, Brownlee showed a slideshow she had prepared on the Clarendon Roller Mills – a flour mill that was in operation until 1944.
The final stop on the tour was Starborn Farms, where Phil Holmes showed the artifacts that were found in his farm field, just a stone’s throw from Starborn, using a metal detector.
He said his favourite is the remnant of a musket ball, and the most useful find was a hitch pin that he lost out of his hay baler a few years ago.
Brownlee thanked the Pontiac Archives present and past, as it was from their work and collected documents that she was able to research her book A Self-Guided Historical Tour of Clarendon, published in 2005.
