Having a pair of 12 year-olds myself, when looking at this delightful photo from the museum’s collection, I can say that it doesn’t seem that boys have changed all that much since this photo was taken. If you recognise the background location or any of these rapscallions, please us know.

This is a square from one of the museums redwork signature quilts, one with an interesting history. The quilt was made by the Elmvale Womens Institute in 1917 and sent to Mary Graham, who was serving overseas as a Nursing Sister. She recorded in her diary:

May 10, 1917

Received a parcel from home today. Just when I was feeling homesick for kith and kin and country a wonderful surprise package arrived. It contained a lovely red and white quilt. There must be five hundred names embroidered in red on the quilt squares. I had a wonderful hour reading all the names of friends and relatives from my whistlestop homebase of Saurin near Elmvale. It was splendid of them to think of me in this way.

Outside of their value as an object of beauty and example of womens work, signature quilts can be studied to reveal family and community histories, and social and kinship relationships.

While rifling through a January 29, 1941 edition of the Free Press, I came across the following article.

In September of that year, Bill Jory enlisted with the Royal Canadian Air Force. He was sent overseas in February of 1944, but by October he was reported missing. While on a minelaying mission in Denmark, his Halifax bomber had gone down in a field near the town of Idom; all 7 men onboard were killed. According to an eyewitness, the airmen were buried by German soldiers with a short prayer and a salute of honour was fired.

Shortly after the liberation of Denmark, a crowd of about 800 civilians, members of the Danish resistance and a Squadron of Canadian soldiers from Flensburg (Germany, about a 230km journey) reburied the men in the Idom churchyard. Today, they are guarded by a cross made from their planes bomb rack.