Another night with another eBay search led me to discover the story behind the Girl Guide plaque in Montebello park. Lately, I’ve been very into collecting vintage postcards from the Ontario Girl Guide Camps I used to work at and while on a postcard hunt for Doe Lake, I came across a black and white photo of a plaque with the Girl Guide trefoil mounted on a large stone with St Catharines, Ontario written on the back. It was in this town that the first Canadian Girl Guide Company was registered under Mary Malcolmson and I hadn't realized there was a public plaque commemorating the start of the movement in Canada. So, excited to start a new research project, I added the photo to my cart and checked out.
Now that I’m becoming more comforting with making purchases over eBay, I’ve discovered how useful it can be to ask a seller how they acquired the item. Most of them reply quickly and it gives you a starting point in your research. This seller received the photo as part of a vintage photography collection at an estate sale. The owner of the estate was a photographer and traveled extensively. Wondering if the seller had any other photos from the same roll, I checked his other listings and found a few more shots of the park with the same handwriting on the back as my plaque photo. While my photo was missing a date, these were labeled 1950 giving me a pretty solid date for when that photo roll was shot.
While I waited for my photo to come in the mail, I started to see what kind of information I could find online. Pretty quickly, I was able to find a current photo of the plaque and while my 1950 photo shows a small plaque in the center of the rock, this photo shows that another plaque has been added under it. I was also able to find references to the two plaques on The Girl Guides of Canada Wikipedia and on an official Girl Guides of Canada History document. When I had exhausted my google research avenues, it was time to make contact with someone in St. Catharines. Lucky St. Catharines, like most small towns, had its own town archives and I was easily able to go to their website and find the contact information for the archivist that runs the collection. They were kind enough to send me an article called "The Evolution of Malcolmson Eco-Park '' by Sheila Wilson, as well as a photo of the unveiling of the second plaque that was printed in the 'St. Catharines Standard' on November 6st, 1967. Between these new sources and some printed books I had on hand I was really starting to pull together a good sense of the history behind the plaques.
The first plaque was revealed the same year my photo was taken in 1950. It was dedicated on the 40th anniversary of Girl Guides of Canada by Jean Rigby, Mary Malcolmson’s daughter and former portal leader of the first Canadian company. While the company was officially registered in England on January 11th, 1910 by Agnes Baden-Powell, it was formed the November before in the ballroom of the Welland House Hotel. In those early days, Malcolmson used the book ‘Scouting for Boys’ by Robert Baden-Powell and two Girl Guide information pamphlets written by Agnes to create her programming. Malcolmson had received these pamphlets through a young neighbor who was given them by Harris Nelson, the first Scoutmaster in St. Catharines. Lord Baden-Powell, who had already been corresponding with Nelson, had sent them in hopes of getting Guiding started in Canada.
The second plaque recognizes the work of Mary Malcolmson and was added as a 1967 centennial project by the local chapter of the ‘Independent Order of the Daughters of the Empire’, whom Malcolmson was also a member of. She was well-known for her community work, and was a teacher in Hamilton prior to her marriage. It was her concern for children that led her to Girl Guides. Jean Rigay, now a former Guide Commissioner was also present at this unveiling along with other original members of that first Guide Company. Malcolmson had previously been recognized by Guiding through the awarding of the Silver Jubilee medal in 1935 and in 1989, the city of St. Catharines honoured Malcolmson by naming an Eco-Park after her that works to protect Canadian wildlife.
One of the last big hurdles of this research project I wanted to overcome is to get a clear top down photo of the plaques. Sure, I knew what was written on it but part of me really wanted to be able to read the plaques. Since there was only that one photo online, I tried a couple different methods. First, I asked a Youtuber that I follow who had a P.O. box in the same town if they could take a photo but understandably never heard back. My next method was to use the Facebook hive mind of Guiders and post in some Facebook groups in the hopes that someone lived close and could take a photo but that didn’t pan out either. However, I haven't given up yet and maybe a road trip after COVID will be needed? When I do get a photo of the plaques I will make sure to post it.
This has been such a fun project to research and I love being able to add this photo to my collection. Researching these items for the blog is a challenge but that’s why I’m enjoying it so much. It’s not as simple as a google search and I need to creatively problem solve and connect to people,just like the archivist in St. Catharines. I’ve made sure to send them a scan of the photo and the pages in the Guide history book about St. Catharines. It’s been great to see how well the city of St. Catharines remembers Mary Malcolmson and it is just so clear how much they care about their own history.
Special thanks to the St. Catharines Public Library
For those who want to check out the plaques on the library’s web page
Thanks for reading!
EM
Oct 2020 Updates:
I didn’t expect to have an update this soon after posting the original blog. While starting the research for another blog post, I connected through Facebook with Megan Gilchrist. Megan is a Guider who lives in St. Catharines and used to be the program coordinator for the St. Catharines Museum. She is also a huge Girl Guide History nerd and wrote the text on the Girl Guide movement for her museum’s 95th anniversary exhibit. She was able to send me some photos that she had taken while walking around the town researching for a video on the local Girl Guide history that she is putting together.
Megan sent three photos with the first being a top-down photo of the two plaques and the second photo was of a third plaque that I didn’t know about. It's a plaque for the 13 trees planted in the memory of Mary Malcolmson in the Malcolmson Eco Park. The trees were planted in 1995 by the Lake Crest and Heritage Divisions of the Girl Guides of Canada. The last photo is of the Welland House Hotels, which is just down the street from Montebello Park. Malcolmson’s brothers purchased the house in 1893 and Mary held her first Girl Guide meeting there in 1909. The hotel is still around today and is now a university residence for Brock University and home of the CFBU-FM, Brock University's campus radio station.
Special Thanks to Megan Gilchrist for the update!
EM
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