Budleigh Past and Present

Adam Bunch is a man on a mission. If you happen to be in Budleigh, or Exeter, or Oundle, or any one of more than a dozen places in Britain that he’s been touring this summer you might be lucky enough to find one of these little postcards that he’s left in strategic positions. Modern To ronto's skyline from the harbour  Image credit: Wikipedia and Jeangagnon  They’re all part of a grand project that he’s dreamt up to let as many people as possible know about the origins of his home city of Toronto. The project, appropriately enough is called Toronto Dreams, and the postcards have been specially created to let the reader imagine what life might have been like a few centuries ago for one of the pioneering figures of Canada’s history. Regular readers of my blog will know that I’m talking about John Graves Simcoe (1752-1806), the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, who was responsible for building T oronto though it was called Y ork in those da...

  Above: The 2011 poster advertising Fairlynch exhibition 'Survival!'   With the ‘Sea, Salt and Sponges’ exhibition at Fairlynch Museum about to close in early November I am now thinking of how to dispose of all the display material. Obviously many of the artefacts will be returrned to the owners who kindly lent them. But what of all the display boards which told the stories of heroic Budleigh characters like Murray Levick and Henry Carter, the subjects of our exhibitions of the last few years?   Does the recycling centre have to be their only destination just because of lack of storage space in the Museum?                                                   Canadian connections: The book Public School Explorers in Newfoundland by Dennis Clarke, published in 1935,  focused on...

Shown above: John Graves Simcoe by Simcoe by Jean-Laurent Mosnier (1743-1808); A Huron-Wendat Hunter Calling a Moose, by Cornelius Krieghoff (1815-1872) John Graves Simcoe's name is well known in Devon history and may be familiar to regular readers of this site via posts like http://www.devonmuseums.net/More-about-John-Graves-Simcoe/Latest-News/ In Canada he's a truly celebrated figure in the nation's history says a correspondent from across the Atlantic . So celebrated that David Loaring, from Burlington , Ontario , told us a story that he wrote a couple of years ago for his grand-children. David got in touch partly because he has a keen interest in family history. "In 1600 or so our family of Loarings lived in Awliscombe and Honiton," he explained. And of course, as Wikipedia will tell you, Wolford Chapel just a few miles from Honiton is the burial place of Simcoe, the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada . It's the prope...