A short performance by the

803 Air Cadet Squadron Pipe Band and Highland Dancing group

will pave the way for the lecture

“Scottish on top, Irish underneath and English to the Core”

Speaker: Historian Alexander Reford, great grandson of Elsie Reford

 
When: Thursday, November 17, 2011, at 19:30

Where: In the Annex to the City Hall, 303 Beaconsfield Blvd, Beaconsfield (Entrance at the west end of the parking lot)

Lecture in English followed by a bilingual question period

Everyone welcome. Admission free.

Scottish on top, Irish underneath and English to the Core

Elsie Reford was an occasional resident of Beaconsfield. Her husband owned a property on Thompson’s Point in Beaurepaire (1896-1907) and she began her married life enjoying summers on Lake St. Louis until she was given the use and finally title to her uncle’s fishing camp, Estevan Lodge, at Grand-Métis on the Lower St. Lawrence. She later transformed this property into a vast ornamental garden, known today as Les Jardins de Métis and Reford Gardens.

Like many English Montrealers of her era, Elsie Reford was born of immigrant parents who had made a new life in Canada. With a patrimony that was both Scottish and Irish, she was nonetheless English to the core. A committed Canadian, her world view, influences, cultural references were heavily influenced by her repeated travels to England and the strong pull exerted by England and its imperial ideal. Instilled with the Scottish virtues of hard work and common sense, her taste in clothes, literature, art, music, politics and plants were thoroughly English.

Historian Alexander Reford, great grandson of Elsie Reford, will present the life and times of Elsie Reford and the ways in which the world view of this English Montrealer was shaped by her Scottish and Irish parentage and how this made her more English, more imperialistic and more Canadian.