Last week, I decided to play Nancy Drew and solve the mystery of the house’s first owners. I started my sleuthing at the Simcoe County Archives, where a very kind and helpful lady advised that it might be best to start my search at the Land Registry Office in Barrie. That is where all records of previous owners on properties can be found. She said that once I got the names of the previous owners and their years of residency, I could come back and easily track down photos and other records of them. I decided to do a little exploring through the archives anyway since I was already there, and drive out to the Registry Office another day. At the Archives, I was able to look through old newspapers and photographs of the area from the early 1900s. The most interesting thing I found were photographs of labor workers posed behind an old car garage. The garage happens to be on the street where I grew up, so it was fascinating to see trees and buildings that are no longer a part of the residential landscape. Later that week, I drove to the Barrie Land Registry, confident that I was going to solve the mystery; however, the Registry Office came with its own set of obstacles. When I finally located the building itself through the construction (and my general problems with directions), I climbed the stairs and entered a room filled with computers, office cubicles and microfilm machines. First, I printed off a legal record of our house's home owners, which turned out to be a listing that just went back to the 1960s. Then, the woman at the front desk told me that I would need to look at the microfilms, as an historical search, because of the age of the house. While she did show me the basics of the microfilm machine, she was more tough love than the soft-spoken, grandmotherly Simcoe County Archives lady, and eyed me with pity from her desk as I struggled to decipher the microfilm documents. As an historical document, the log of the house's owners is hand-written and has been photocopied so that it is really hard to read. Another obstacle that I encountered was that some microfilms had been sent away to Toronto, one of which supposedly has more information on our house's first owner (of course). After squinting at the microfilm document I could access, and trying to will it into a clearer image, I paid for my photocopy and left. By the end of my first week of detective work, I had a faded photocopy of an historical log and a lot of unanswered questions. Kyle and I studied the faded handwriting on the historical home owner log later that night. What is legible in the name slot is: “John A. McD….d,” with the middle letters of the last name unreadable… John A. McDonald?! While it is funny to imagine a famous Canadian hiding out in Stayner at the end of his life, we realize with disappointment that it couldn't be. Aside from the fact that John A. MacDonald has an “a” in between his “Mc” and that he died right before our house was built, the names are also pretty common. And the “A” initial? Kyle pointed out that including the “A” was probably a party trick that this guy used to get a laugh. I kind of hope it was. It looks like I have another trip to the Registry Office to revisit this microfilm with a magnifying glass and to take a look at the microfilms that were in Toronto on my last visit. The search for John A. McD…..d continues.
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About MeKyle and I just became new homeowners. The house we purchased is not what one would classify as "move in ready"; in fact, it is quite the opposite. Built at the turn of the 20th century, our Victorian style house is both beautiful and terrifying in its ancient status and will be a project in renovation. This is a documentation of our triumphs and lessons learned, as we deconstruct and reconstruct this house. The end result? A space that we can proudly say we created. Archives
December 2016
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