While photographing the former Almonte Post Office building, I enjoyed seeing the decorative wall of a close-by building especially since the inscription “Latin for Today” reminded me of my Latin classes taken over 45 years ago ( abit rusty now though!) :-).
The Bench of the Minister and His Wife: A stone bench, with an old stone from a grist mill incorporated into its construction, sits along the banks of the Mississippi River. On the back of this bench is a bronze medallion inscribed with the names of William McKenzie and Catherine Shiells. A bit of after-the-fact sleuthing and I find that William McKenzie (not the William Lyon MacKenzie of Toronto history) was a local minister in Almonte’s formative years. Their son, Dr. Robert Tait McKenzie became a physician specializing in sports medicine and was also a gifted sculptor.
Another type of memory is preserved at a war memorial sculpture only a short distance from the reverend’s bench.
The railway played an important historical role in the growth and development of Almonte’s woollen mill and textile past. What its role in the future will be is anyone’s guess but if you follow the river and the railine north, you soon find the village of Pakenham with its five-arched stone bridge.
