Ontario Township

Zorra is a township in Oxford County in south-western Ontario. A predominantly rural municipality, Zorra was formed in 1975 through the amalgamation of East Nissouri, West Zorra and North Oxford townships. It is best known for the Highland Games weekend held each summer in Embro, celebrating the heritage of the Scottish pioneer families. The township comprises the communities of Banner, Bennington, Brooksdale, Brown's Corners, Cody's Corners, Dicksons Corners, Dunn's Corner, Embro, Golspie, Granthurst, Harrington, Harrington West, Holiday, Kintore, Lakeside, Maplewood, McConkey, Medina, Rayside, Thamesford, Uniondale, Youngsville, and Zorra Station.Among the earliest settlers of Zorra Township, were United Empire Loyalists from the New England States. Zorra was first surveyed in 1820 and Embro became a separate municipality in 1858. Embro is located on a branch of the Thames River. The first buildings were two distilleries owned by McDonald and Crittenden.Flour, grist and oatmeal mills were built. John McDonald built a carding and cloth factory. Businesses started up: watchmaker and jeweler, boots and shoes, eight blacksmith shops, wagon and carriage makers, tinsmith, carpenters, potash manufacturer, four general stores, two cabinet makers, undertaker, three doctors, and a pump manufacturer. In 1875, Embro had two newspapers, "The Planet" and "The Review", with a third added in 1880, "The Embro Courier". The Embro Public Library started as a Mechanics Institute in 1882; it became a public library in 1895.

A Township at War takes the reader from rural Canadian field and farm to the slopes of Vimy Ridge and the mud of Passchendaele, and shows how a tightly knit Ontario community was consumed and transformed by the trauma of war. In 1914, the southern Ontario township of East Flamborough was like a thousand other rural townships in Canada, broadly representative in its wartime experience. Author Jonathan Vance draws from rich narrative sources to reveal what rural people were like a century ago—how they saw the world, what they valued, and how they lived their lives. We see them coming to terms with global events that took their loved ones to distant battlefields, and dealing with the prosaic challenges of everyday life. Fall fairs, recruiting meetings, church services, school concerts—all are reimagined to understand how rural Canadians coped with war, modernism, and a world that was changing more quickly than they were. This is a story of resilience and idealism, of violence and small-mindedness, of a world that has long disappeared and one that remains with us to this day.

Explore the history of the township system in Ontario, Canada through this comprehensive study by John Millar McEvoy. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources and personal interviews, McEvoy provides a detailed account of the origins and evolution of townships in Ontario from the early 19th century to the present day, with a particular focus on the social and economic impact of this system on rural communities. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

"The Ontario Municipal Board attracted power to it from the time it was formed in 1906 as a railway overseer and thereafter until 1932 when it became the regulatory tribunal for municipal financing and urban and regional planning applications. By 2006, the same government of Ontario that had entrusted the OMB with pre-eminent authority as the provincial land use, expropriation, and development charge adjudicator with oversight power over elected municipal councils, decided to merge its administration and location with four other boards and cross-appoint OMB members to those boards. The roster of OMB members began to contract... it was now part of an undefined, vaguely delineated entity called a cluster, and the cluster was called the Environment and Land Tribunals Ontario - ELTO. Starting with its apex in influence and attention through years when it shaped the planning law of Ontario, this book takes you through a story of the rise, decline and reform of the most controversial board in Canada. For experts, it recasts the Hopedale and Baker doctrines for modern administrative law. For public administration, it suggests caution and boldness."--

Winner of The Ontario Historical Society’s Fred Landon Award for Best Regional History. With 300 photos and 11 maps. A work of unexpected delights and surprises: here is a one-of-a-kind guidebook that pinpoints the best of Ontario’s architectural heritage in its most charming towns, offers tantalizing and informative details of provincial history, indulges the near universal vice of real-estate voyeurism, and beckons even the most reluctant to physical exercise. Katherine Ashenburg is our knowledgeable and charmingly opinionated companion on walking tours of ten small (populations 1000 to 27,000) Ontario communities that provide a rewarding variety of domestic and public architecture in a walkable compass. Each tour begins with a brief historical sketch of the town, then, with the aid of a detailed map, guides the reader/walker to some 60 sites over a leisurely but carefully plotted two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half hour stroll. We visit churches and jails, libraries and town halls, theatres and factories, and all manner of houses - homes of startling grandiosity and humble integrity. We become conversant with belvederes and ogee arches, Flemish bond and board and batten, at ease with Regency and Queen Anne, Italianate and Romanesque. And along the way, Ashenburg reveals the town’s true personality, its distinctive architectural styles, forms and materials, and the genius, ambition, and vanities of its founders and builders. Every town - Perth, Picton, Cobourg, St. Mary’s, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Merrickville, Port Hope, Paris, Stratford and Goderich - is a day’s excursion from Toronto by a car or public transit; most are day-trips from either Ottawa or London. Over 300 black and white photographs capture the highlights; 11 maps show the way. For easy reference, there is a helpful, illustrated Guide to Historical Styles and an exhaustive Glossary of Architectural terms - everything from Apse to Voussoir.