Clyde River celebrates its 10th History Lecture Series
The Clyde River History Society is pleased to host their 10th Clyde River History Lecture Series. The events run on Saturdays: January 27th, February 10th and February 24th from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at the Riverview Community Centre at 718 Clyde River Road. We welcome you to join us to learn and be entertained. This year features stories from PEI’s bygone days, historical aerial photography and maps tracing development in the area, and wraps up with off-the-record, colourful stories about PEI sports history that you won’t find in any history book.
Dutch Thompson interviewing 100-year-old Lulu Thomson
Dutch Thompson – “ Laughter: The Best Medicine – Liquor and Animals Version…Stories from PEI’S Bygone Days about moonshine, country vets, Stompin’ Tom, and the famous salt herring cure” – January 27th, 2024, 1:30 p.m.
Dutch is not just a storyteller, he’s a time machine tour guide to PEI’s yesteryear. He will take us back with select stories from his 900-hour audio collection (interviews with midwives, blacksmiths, rumrunners, railwaymen, and male and female hockey players and others) recorded with folks born between 1895-1925 on CBC radio for the past 34 years. Dutch has written two books preserving these stories and is presently working on his third book featuring his Grammie’s handwritten recipes, complemented with stories about food, fishing, and farm life in The Bygone Days. Lives in Bunbury in a 175-year-old farmhouse where he and his wife Jill B spend all their spare time (and money).
Josh MacFadyen
Josh MacFadyen – “ Time Flies: A History of Prince Edward Island from the Air” – February 10, 2024, 1:30 p.m.
Based on his new book, Time Flies: A History of Prince Edward Island from the Air, Dr. MacFadyen will show that development in Clyde River and the Greater Cornwall Area is changing rapidly, just as the province is experiencing sustainability challenges in both housing and agriculture. The talk will show these changes using a unique combination of aerial photographs, historical maps, and other more traditional sources. The changes in this traditionally agricultural landscape are a reflection of some of the larger trends underway across rural and suburban Canada.
Josh MacFadyen is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Geospatial Humanities in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Prince Edward Island. He teaches in the Applied Communication, Leadership & Culture Program, and he leads the GeoREACH lab at UPEI which supports Geospatial Research in Atlantic Canadian History. He traces many of his MacFadyen roots to the greater Clyde River area.
Fred “Fiddler” MacDonald (photo credit – Saltwire)
Fred “Fiddler” MacDonald – “Off-the-Record PEI Sports Stories” – February 24th,2024 1:30 p.m.
Fred “Fiddler” MacDonald will regale us with off-the-record, colourful stories about hockey, baseball, fastball, harness racing, and boxing in PEI’s history.
One would be challenged to find someone who knows more about PEI sports history. Fred has written the Saturday Sports column for The Guardian for almost 50 years and appeared on the highly popular CBC television Monday program Five Minute Flurry with Bruce Rainnie which ran in Charlottetown and throughout Maritimes. For the past decade, he and his wife Gail have edited Atlantic Post Calls, the newspaper that covers harness racing in this region and Ontario.
Fred received a PEI Heritage Award for Down the Backstretch, a mammoth history of Maritime harness racing, and from Heritage Charlottetown Award for his book A Tale of Two Fiddlers, a walk through the pages of time with a newspaper boy growing up in the centre of the City. His work also earned him a Senate of Canada medal for his long-term contributions to Island society.
Following each of our history presentations is a social hour with refreshments. We also invite visitors to tour our museum of community artifacts and historic photos.
For more information on our history lectures, contact Vivian Beer, vivian@eastlink.ca Our History Society Committee also includes Sandra Cameron, Sarah Cameron, Hilda Colodey, Rowena Stinson, and Joanne Turner.