Alleyn-et-Cawood may only have a full-time population of 229 people, but it celebrated in a big way for the municipality’s 150th anniversary on Saturday.
Attendees enjoyed a range of activities, from a beer garden to a vendor market to helicopter rides with panoramic views, and even an opportunity to dunk mayor Sidney Squitti, director general Isabelle Cardinal, public works director Pat Miljour and inspector Jessica Vahey into a tank of cold water.
Mayor Sidney Squitti delivered the day’s opening speech in period costume on a float designed to look like an old-time saloon. She spoke to THE EQUITY in her much cooler street clothes shortly thereafter.
“We wanted to have a float that was representative of 1876 when the municipality was formed. So we bounced around different ideas as a council and we ultimately fell on the saloon,” she said, adding that the float was an homage to a float from the centennial parade in 1976.
The village of Danford Lake got its name in 1855 from Patrick Danford, one of the first settlers to the municipality who came to cut timber. He was followed by loggers and other settlers, including William Heeney, whose descendants contributed to the growth and development of the community. In 1876, the Municipality of Alleyn-and-Cawood was formed after splitting from Thorne.
Municipal employee Sheila Emon has been getting up close and personal with the community’s history this year, spending hundreds of hours collecting artifacts and interviewing community members. The result of this work was available to the public on Saturday in the form of a pop-up museum.
Emon displayed a slideshow of community-submitted images, old sports memorabilia, as well as a grade book from the old Balm-of-Gilead (pronounced ‘Bama Gilly’) school, one of a handful of one-room schoolhouses in the municipality.
“I’m going through [the book] and I see the names of my husband’s family, and his lineage is in here. And for people in the community, it’s when they were children. So this is a great link,” Emon said, adding that the book really brought the history to life.
“The lady that donated this book, her grandfather was a Catholic in a Protestant community. And apparently, according to rumour, he’d go to school and the teacher singled him out. So one year, you can tell because he didn’t go to school very much. Stories like that made me laugh out loud.”
In honour of the anniversary celebration, local residents also got to work digitizing editions of the Danford Moonlighter, a locally produced, often-satirical community newsletter that was printed between 1985 and 1987.
The first edition of the paper featured classified ads (which listed, among other items, a life-sized blow-up doll for sale); marital advice from the mayor (“Every time my wife takes a bath I offer to wash her back”); and important municipal council decisions (an unnamed “mountain man” complained to the council about having to walk up Johnson Mountain to his home, so the council simply declared the mountain a swamp instead. “Another happy tax-payer,” concluded the council.)
Emon, who moved to Alleyn-et-Cawood over 30 years ago, said the work has taught her a lot about her community, whether it was through reading historical documents or meeting with longtime residents. She said she is trying to acquire MRC funding to create a full-time museum that would put all of this history on display.
“We’re losing our history keepers and I would like to be able to collect it before they’re all passed. This community has a very eclectic history – French, English, Protestant, Irish, Scottish, loggers, you name it,” she said.
Squitti said she was proud to show off that eclectic history. She added in her speech that Alleyn-et-Cawood has faced many trials and tribulations in the past, but its people are what will help the municipality pivot toward the future.
“We want to be the gateway to the Pontiac,” she said, adding that the municipality is the first point of entry from MRC Vallée-de-la-Gatineau.
Squitti said preparations for the event required a lot of work from municipal staff as well as volunteers, who played a big role in getting the park ready as well as organizing all the activities and vendors.
“It’s really the community members that this is for, and we have them to thank for such a rich history and such a great event. And we hope for [ . . . ] the 175th to be a success in the next 25 years,” she said.
Saturday’s festivities were the latest in a series of events organized by a committee in honour of the municipality’s milestone anniversary. Events will continue through the summer and fall with a Canada Day event on July 1; an outdoor movie in August; a grape picking event at nearby vineyard Domaine de Cawood in September, where an anniversary wine will be unveiled; a trick-or-treating event in October; a special Remembrance Day ceremony in November; a tree lighting in December and a final hoorah in the form of a New Year’s party on Dec. 31.
