Midland History

Allison introduced Bill Northcotte and Bill Smith, the co-authors of the new illustrated history of Midland

Bill Northcotte said they'd had a lot of help from Rotary and Rotarians Rod Ferguson, Myles who provided lots of pictures and Fred Hacker whose firm bought 75 copies.  They printed 2,000 and have recouped 25 thousand of the 40 thousand printing costs.

The cover picture is of a boat built at MSS, taken out through a window a being sailed at a competition in Denmark.  Bill said his first book had been about Thunder Beach and talked about the improvements in printing lately.  He showed a couple of pictures before and after they had been technically enhanced and the differences were marked.  The biggest problem with a project like this is what to leave out.

Hugel was the mayor of Port Hope before moving north and his biography has been researched by a latter mayor of that town.  We saw pictures of him, his house in Midland and his grave in Montreal.  Hugel's family was actually from Alsace-Lorraine and was more French than German.

Bill showed us a selection of shots from the book - pictures of the bay, the lumber yards, the smelter, and houses etc.  A shot of Hugel was obtained from London at a cost of $150.00 and Bill was glad to say the local museum was more reasonable.  He had a copy of a story about a rowing fair held here - printed in Orillia - which remarked on the tremendous amount of swearing, drinking and fighting the Midlanders embarked on.  And he thanked Clint specifically for his hours of work identifying people and cars and filling in the stories when he could.