Eric Bunnell's People: A 'great season' for revitalized Horton Farmer's Market

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We’ll get to Halloween in a sec. Just like Sunday follows Saturday, the Horton Farmers’ Market comes first.

Saturday is the final day of the market’s regular 2021 season and, says manager Vicki Asher, “What a great season it has been.”

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“It has. It truly has,” she says.

After a near-crippling last year from COVID-19, the venerable Horton market has rebounded under new oversight of the St. Thomas Economic Development Corp. and the Elgin/St. Thomas Small Business Enterprise Centre.

In turn, Vicki credits the community for its unwavering support for the market.

“The community’s support and dedication to the farmers market is overwhelming.”

Shoppers have patronized from 35 to 42 local vendors each week. And while the growing season is coming to an end, there still are 31 registered for Saturday.

The development corporation said in January, after it took on the market, that it would grow the weekly sale as an attraction.

Now, Vicki says, “We’re exploring all sorts of options now that the market is up and strong.”

Coming up on the calendar is the return of the Horton Christmas Market from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Nov. 20.

Close to 70 vendors – growers and artisans, as well – have sold out the market’s booths.

“This is your last chance to stock up on your favourites!”

An event tent will offer a licensed premises with local wine and beer.

That evening, Railway City Tourism is sponsoring a Horton Christmas Market After Dark party. It’s a ticketed evening of out-of-doors festive frivolity, including a prize for best retro-look outfit.

Promises the tourism agency: “The market pavilions will be decorated for the holidays, a bar will be on site and hot drinks readily available.

“Enjoy the festive stylings of DJ Adrian from A&M Sounds. Get your friends together and play some giant board games, or compete at cornhole with the St. Thomas Cornhole League.

“Grab a beer or glass of wine and relax by the fire, or dance up a storm in the tent! Food trucks will be on site as well to satisfy any cravings.”

Click to railwaycitytourism.com

The worst Halloween candy?

Now, to Sunday.

They have been reviled as “the worst Halloween candy ever devised by human hands.”

And, yep, St. Thomas may be partly to blame.

Of course, you don’t need to be trick-or-treating as a rocket scientist to guess – quite correctly – that National Post reporter Tristan Hopper was describing a Kerr’s Molasses Kiss.

(Indeed, growing up in Vancouver, did we ever hate getting them in the pillow cases that were our loot bags. Kerr’s Kisses were second in disappointment only to the toothbrushes that dentists gave out.)

But did you know the candy-maker, now based in Oakville, Ont., got its start in the Railway City?

The company was established in 1895 in town by brothers Albert and Edward Kerr, Scottish emigrees who bought a confectionary on the south side of Talbot Street just east of Metcalfe. The building later was knocked down for construction of the Grand Central apartments.

Steve Peters, historian of almost everything local, doesn’t know exactly why the brothers (joined by a third in the business, James) chose St. Thomas. But city directories of the day named a number of Kerr families, and he wonders if the brothers came to join relations.

“That would be my guess. They came here for family.”

The confectionary flourished and the Kerrs opened a second store in 1898 on Talbot at Flora Street, likely where the Century 21 building stands today. Locations of old businesses are a bit of a guess, Steve notes, because Talbot was renumbered in 1908 to eliminate a number of fractional addresses that complicated mail delivery.

But the following year, they sold out, and moved away.

Kerr’s says it didn’t start making molasses kisses until after the candy-maker set up shop in Toronto.

But who knows what role St. Thomas may have played?

Today, the company recognizes that, just as there is for just about almost everything else, there are two kinds of people in this world — those who love molasses kisses, and those who truly, totally, absolutely detest them.

“I don’t mind them at all,” Steve says

“They’re not my favourites, but I’ll nibble on a few — to me, it is the taste of Halloween.”

(BTW, Rockets are his treat of choice.)

A better confection?

To footnote. If you wanna blame StT for molasses kisses, you also gotta remember that Howard Vair, inventor of Poppycock, also called the city his home before he removed to a Detroit suburb where he created his confection.

Calamity City and AfterDeath

And even though they can be murder on your dental work, it’s not for molasses kisses that St. Thomas once was known as the Calamity City.

As home to headquarters of two railways, news reports of any accident on the lines bore a Railway City dateline, reminisced James H. Brierley in 1931 when he looked back on his days as publisher of The Journal (before the 1918 merger with the Daily Times).

One such calamity was the dreadful 1887 collision between trains on the Michigan Central and London and Port Stanley railways, where the lines crossed each other at Centre Street. The London and Port Stanley train, carrying children from a Baptist Sunday School picnic, struck the Michigan Central freight.

Brierley was a witness to the aftermath.

“When I arrived at the scene, a volume of dense smoke was pouring from a tangle of cars scattered around the diamond crossing.

“Before many minutes our ears were stunned by an explosion and a black column sprung skyward.

“As it reached its limit it spread like a mushroom, its circular head widening as you looked.

“In a moment we grasped hat had occurred. An oil tank had exploded and that black column and enlarging head were loaded with scalding oil, ready to fall on our heads. … A I never saw so wild a plunge for safety and can remember jumping over the prostrate bodies and men who had stumbled in the race or who had thought the ground offered safety.”

He recalls the accident left 13 dead, including firefighter Herman Ponsford, fatally scalded.

Now, just in time for Halloween 2021, the accident is one of several real-life incidents inspiring St. Thomas writer Joy Ferguson’s first novel, AfterDeath.

Writing as Margaret Butler (because she thought her own name lacked the necessary seriousness for the subject matter), Joy explores the Victorian fascination with the afterlife and attempts to communicate with those who have gone on – a fixation with spiritualism which Joy says arose, in part, because of the huge loss of life in the U.S. Civil War, especially among young men whose futures were ahead of them.

“So many people lost loved ones.”

In her historical fiction, a reporter for the New York Tribune – intrepid, as all reporters are! – investigates a number of spiritualist happenings, looking to uncover hoaxes.

“Ultimately, he answers a question to himself, whether there is life after death,” Joy says.

But you’ll have to read the book, a 345-page tome.

“”I don’t know if I should give it away,” Joy laughs.

The granddaughter of a woman who was a minister in a spiritualist church in Toronto, Joy says she doesn’t have her forebear’s gift of seeing.

But she does have another gift. She has produced several non-fiction books for children, and works as a writer, researcher and fact-checker.

She moved in 2007 to St. Thomas when the children enrolled in post-secondary schooling in London.

“Someone said, ‘If you’re looking in London, you should look at St. Thomas.’,” Joy says.

“I was lucky to discover St. Thomas,” she says, appreciating, in particular, the history around her.

Her book is available locally at Lockwood Books, Talbot Street., the recently opened indie bookstore that Joy says with its mix of new and old books, and antiques, is “perfect for this book.”

“It’s a wonderful store. …. I haven’t managed to go there and not bring something home.”

An e-book is available through Amazon.

‘A ghost story with a twist’

Here’s Joy: “Since Halloween is just a few days away, it might also interest you to know that I’ve been asked quite often if AfterDeath is a ghost story. My answer, “AfterDeath is a ghost story with a twist … the ghosts are real.”

A “That is, the novel is set in the last half of the 1800s, a time when the Victorians became fascinated by Gothic writers like Poe and the supernatural. So, the book is filled with séances and experiences with clairvoyance and mediumship. But it was also an era of scientific investigation and discovery, including research into psychic phenomena by respected professors, such as William James.

“So, I have weaved documented supernatural occurrences (and footnoted the sources) into the fictional story of a young correspondent for the New York Tribune who begins with a reporter’s skepticism for the supernatural, but over time, as he investigates far-reaching news stories, ranging from the battlefields of the American Civil War to the parlours of famous mediums, his perspective on whether we can communicate with those who have died (ghosts) alters.”

Stay well!

ericbunnellspeople@gmail.com