Franz Aschwanden thinks about the opportunities. There are so many ways he can dig into the area’s past to learn something new and share it with others.
There’s Carrot Fest, for instance. Every year the Bradford West Gwillimbury Local History Association sets up a tent to demonstrate something about local history they find interesting that may well fascinate others.
“I’m retired,” he quips, “and therefore do have time.”
Just what, exactly, they’ll display at the Aug. 16 and 17 festival won’t be determined until the association’s next meeting. It could be something neat, like the “mechanical gizmo” on which a carrot was able to spin that he created for last year's event.
He’d love to see town council or an organization sponsor a round trip on the Bradford bus — a ride to give area residents a chance to experience a community service he feels is underappreciated. It would be fun, he muses, if there was a host on board discussing the routes, the stops and the sites.
The association through its 40-or-so members sets out to establish, illustrate and define the history of the area, preserve it and make it accessible to the public. It also helps with family research.
“There's a lot of people doing studies of their families,” explains its president, Mikki Nanowski. “Often people who live far away find they have roots in Bradford so they will ask us to look up things and we always do that with pleasure.”
Aschwanden figures he’s been involved for a couple of decades and currently serves on the association’s executive. He’s also past president of the Tecumseth West Gwillimbury Historical Society.
It’s nice, he says, to know about the area in which you live and its past.
Last week, he led The Mystery Tour of interesting sites across the area. It’s a tour hosted by the association every year, focusing on different locations. Since they weren’t able to secure a bus for the outing, it turned into a caravan of seven cars with well over a dozen people.
The Bond Head cemetery is a great starting point. Cemeteries often contain fascinating stories with the graves of well-known or historic people and their family members. They also went to the Wilson's Hill Pioneer Cemetery on County Road 27 which Aschwanden describes as one of the nicest in Simcoe County, “something one should see.”
They checked out a plaque in the Anglican rectory near Bond Head marking the birthplace of physician and author, Sir William Osler.
The cars then trekked up a dusty road north to Environment Canada’s Centre for Atmospheric Research Experiments in Egbert.
“We couldn’t quite do the trip we had planned because the road had collapsed. But we got up to the radar and environmental study area,” Aschwanden says. “It’s a training centre, a fully fledged, fully grown radar station.”
From there, they headed to CFB Borden. It’s been 100 years since Canada introduced its air force, he explains. They managed to tour its museum and listened to a presentation by Aschwanden’s son-in-law.
For next year’s tour, wherever that ends up being, Aschwanden is hoping to once again secure a bus to keep everyone together. Perhaps they’ll check out the canal to Lake Simcoe that never was.
A source of ongoing fascination is the Auld Kirk Scotch Settlement on the 6th Line, west of the 10th Sideroad. Its church was restored, thanks to the community and the association, and is owned by the town.
As for the tour next year, Aschwanden says: “It’s a mystery to me as well.” Perhaps they’ll look south to the Carrying Place Trail or Humber Portage and the Toronto Passage which was a major route for original settlers, connecting Lake Ontario to the Holland Marsh with Lake Simcoe.
There are areas, he says, where the track is still visible.
But Carrot Fest is first.
“It’s just to wave the flag and say here we are … and find out more about where you live,” he says.
