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| October 17, 2024 Speaker: Laura Suchan What Gravestones Can Tell You About Your Ancestors Join us as Laura Suchan, local historian, walks us through the clues and information that gravestones can reveal about our ancestors and the world in which they lived. Genealogists know information retrieved from gravestones has a practical application to identify the deceased. However, gravestones can offer up more information about your ancestors when interpreted correctly. Besides functioning as a memorial to the deceased, gravestones in Ontario provide insight into nineteenth and twentieth century life. The visual imagery of the gravestone motifs functions as a decorative element, which reaffirm the position of the deceased within the community and celebrate relationships. On an artistic level, gravestones offer insights into popular culture. Motifs were specifically chosen by the carver or family members to communicate messages about the departed and their significance in the community. In an era when illiteracy was common, carvers relied on the symbols to convey messages of mortality and spirituality to those unable to read. Themes relating to life, death and the hope for everlasting life are just some of the messages portrayed on the stones. |
For over thirty years Laura Suchan has worked in the heritage field in Ontario, most recently as Executive Director of the Oshawa Museum until her retirement at the end of 2022. She is a historian, consultant, genealogist and cemetery tourist who has contributed her skills and expertise to a number of organizations and committees throughout her career most recently as a Board member for the Ontario Historical Society. Laura enjoys traveling, yoga, writing, visiting museums and discovering cemeteries around the world. For more information please visit www.laurasuchan.com |
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| November 21, 2024 Speaker: Barbara Dickson Bomb Girls Most Canadians are unaware that an extensive long-abandoned tunnel system runs under the streets of Toronto, Ontario. Over eighty years ago, the Canadian government built a top-secret munitions factory in the rural community of Scarborough just seven miles from Toronto’s downtown. The plant, called GECO—General Engineering Company (Canada) Limited—comprised 346 acres, 172 buildings, and over four kilometers of underground passageways. |
Barbara Dickson’s book, Bomb Girls: Trading Aprons for Ammo is a comprehensive, historical record of Canada’s biggest WWII munitions plant, GECO, which employed over 21,000 citizens, predominantly women, courageously working with high explosives around the clock during the Second World War. In her presentation, Barbara delivers a dramatic, personal, and detailed review of GECO and shares with audiences the incredible contribution made by so many women so long ago. What was it really like to work in a munitions factory? Did anyone die? What were working conditions like? How closely did bomb girls resemble “Rosie the Riveter?” Barbara draws from over 20 years of research to answer these questions. About Barbara Barbara Dickson is a sought-after award-winning best-selling author, historian, public speaker, documentary film producer and writer who has entertained, educated, and enlightened audiences for twenty-five years. Vision Barbara strives to educate Canadians about the phenomenal work carried out by women across the nation whose invaluable contribution helped win the Second World War. She is committed to ensuring that Canada’s bomb girls are honoured and commemorated by fellow Canadians including all levels of government. Her legacy project is to found a museum on the old GECO site where the public can come learn, appreciate, and remember the critical sacrifice women made for their country so long ago. Milestones • Two Scarborough streets commemorating GECO and Canada’s bomb girls named in 2020; • Release of Bomb Girls: A Documentary, Bell Media, 2017, and short-listed for the Annie Potts award at the prestigious 2018 Imperial War Museum’s Film Festival; • Release of Bomb Girls: Trading Aprons for Ammo, Dundurn Press, 2015; • 2016 Finalist of Ontario Legislature’s Book Award; • Hosted televised tour of GECO’s Scarborough tunnel system for CTV News, June 2012. Web: www.barbaradickson.ca Facebook: www.facebook.com/bombgirlsofscarborough e-Mail: barbara@barbaradickson.ca Address: P.O. Box 30001, RPO Huntingwood, Scarborough, ON M1T 0A1 |