By Celia Hunter
For MCHS, energy for the future is fueled by inspiration from the past. We start the month of April with a party, thanks to the mean-spirited weather that the final days of March dealt us, resulting in the postponement of our celebrated Trivia Night.
Resilient as ever, we re-booked for this Friday, April 4, with our cream-of-the-crop emcee Rachel Finnie ready to welcome a Legion Hall full of eager contestants. She has an up-to-the-minute, uplifting, all-Canadian Content quiz ready to roll. All are welcome, with the entry fee set at pay-what-you-can. Doors open at 6:45 pm.
Just one week later, on Friday, April 11, again at the Millbrook Legion Hall, your Historical Society welcomes the Nine Ships 1825 Bicentennial Team. These individuals have dedicated their time, talents and skills over the past several years to organizing and delivering an array of activities, special events and presentations to mark the 200th anniversary of the Peter Robinson Irish Emigration project. This undertaking tore families apart as just over 2,000 men, women and children from the Blackwater Valley in County Cork signed up for settlement in Upper Canada. This presentation explores why emigration seemed to be so attractive, and will trace the conditions and surprises encountered on the way to a new life in what would one day become Peterborough. Come and discover some of the differences in the experiences of these settlers as compared to those who arrived in the Millbrook Cavan-Monaghan area just a few years earlier. There will be lots of time for questions and discussion. This is also an ideal opportunity to do all the homework for 4thLine Theatre’s August production ,Wild Irish Geese, written by Megan Murphy who many will know from The Verandah Society productions. This play, directed by Managing Artistic Director Kim Blackwell, will also feature Megan in the lead role of Narrator or Seanchai.
Our event begins at 7 pm on April 4, with admission free for Historical Society members and by donation for guests. All are welcome!
April is also the month that work will begin on our new Heritage Millbrook Self-Guided Tour booklet. Volunteers will meet to put together a list of prospective properties to be featured. Property owners will all be contacted and consulted so that we can produce a guide that includes as much history as we can fit in.
In a parallel initiative, we have also just begun to develop an inventory of heritage farms and barns in our township. This will be a digital record, available online, so that we preserve the history and the memory of our agricultural heritage through photographs, stories and interviews. For more information about your local Historical Society, visit our website, millbrookcavanhs.org