A remarkable book about Hamiltonian Thomas McQuesten, brings to mind a sad fact: many a photograph, many a bit of history is lost when the contents of closets or drawers are discarded. Sometimes sheer volume of stuff makes it impractical to go through papers, correspondence, documents, photos one-by-one.
A visit to Whitehern some time ago, home of the McQuesten family in Hamilton, Ontario, provided me with an insight to the importance of taking the time. A regular search on the internet rewarded the staff of Whitehern with a missing artifact ~ an observant curator recognized an unidentified photograph as one of the family members and was able to acquire it for the collection.
Someone recently told me that he fondly remembers the hours he spent with an elderly aunt looking over old black and white photos of Cayuga. He then reluctantly confessed that family members brought in a dumpster on the event of his aunt's death and everything was apparently lost.
One can only ponder what early history of our village disappeared with that convenient dumpster.
~ Thomas Baker McQuesten, Public Works, Politics and Imagination, John C. Best, Corinth Press, Hamilton, Ontario, 1991
Photo: Colour along The Grand River today.