Pioneer Pergola, Galt (Cambridge)

I recently visited the Pioneer Pergola in Cambridge last week. I have visited the site more times than I can count, but it's only as an adult that I can truly appreciate the lives of the people represented by these tombstones, and really visualise the world in which they lived.

The pergola is located in a small and peaceful park on St. Andrews Street in Cambridge Ontario, right across from Dickson Public School. During my elementary years at Dickson (built in 1876 and also attended by my grandmother in the 1940s), my class would often visit the park to practise snowshoeing, or to learn about the natural environment. The tombstones were something to be respected - or marginally feared if you happened to find your first or last name on one of them.

Today, they are a slowly vanishing reminder of the people who created a thriving village out of a forest. Many of the tombstones date from the 1840s-50s, and indicate the individual's place of birth. Inverness-shire, Perthshire, Roxburghshire, and Aberdeenshire were all major counties in Scotland which contributed eager settlers to the Township of North Dumfries.

Further Reading:

Canada's Historic Places, "Pioneer Pergola"
Plaque Text can be found, unofficially, here.
Canada's Historic Places, "Dickson Public School"

Photos were taken by myself, May 2014.