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All the City/Town Signs
Photo Credit: Amanda Rood |
HELLO Readers,
I am writing today to speak about a trip my sister and I decided we would take together during COVID Restrictions. We would have loved to explore Europe but due to travel restrictions we stayed in Ontario. There have been many small towns and cities named after European towns, as the settlers named them when they came to Canada. Therefore, we decided that we would do our own version of Europe and travel to those specific towns.
We went to 11 different places, and stopped to take a picture at the City Sign in each location. We got some ice cream in Paris, ON and we always like to get some Sparta candles, though this trip we were behind in our timing.
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The Four Corners in the Center of
Downtown Paris, ON
Photo Credit: Danielle Gadsby |
We started our trip in Zurich, not too far from where my sister lives. We then went onto Dublin, I tried to find the more designed signs at each location, but most have the general county blue signs. After that we went to Brussells. It is self proclaimed "Ontario's Prettiest Village", this may have been true sometime in the tenure of 150 years. In Brussells, there was a shop with old signs and many old cars out front, but not much of anything else.
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Penman's Dam on the
Grand River in Paris, ON
Photo Credit: Danielle Gadsby |
We then drove to the small hamlet of Lisbon, followed by Luxemburg and New Hamburg. We then decided we wanted to travel to Paris, as we wanted to be able to walk around and see the Grand River. We needed to stretch our legs at this point. We wandered the streets and took in the view, laughing, photographing and having an ice cream. There is one intersection that has multiple ways to cross, you can go the regular route, all the way at each section, but there are also crisscross through the intersection. I decided I wanted to try and take a photo standing in the middle.
When we left Paris, we still had a few more places on our list. We headed to Scotland, Vienna and Copenhagen which were all south of Paris. These were cute little places as well, neither of us had been here.
After the day long trek we travelled to St. Thomas for dinner and decided to take pictures with the elephant statue we had driven by many times as children.
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Standing under Jumbo the Elephant
Photo Credit: Amanda Rood |
Growing up my Great Aunt lived in St. Thomas. She informed my sister and I of the history of why Jumbo the large elephant statue is on display in St. Thomas. She always told us that she had the glass negatives of photos that were taken of Jumbo's death. When she closed her photography studio these were donated to the archives of Elgin County. She and her husband had taken over a photography studio from her father-in-law. Her father-in-law had purchased the business from Murray Scott in 1955. The glass negative of Jumbo was a photo taken by Murray Scotts father Thomas in 1885.
This statue was built in 1985 as a monumental memory in the 100th anniversary of his death. It is speculated that Disney's Dumbo is loosely based on the real life of Jumbo who was originally in a Paris Zoo after his mother was killed by poachers. Later Jumbo was sold to P.T. Barnum, and became the world's first animal superstar.
Jumbo was the star of P.T. Barnum's "Greatest Show on Earth" in 1881. September 15, 1885 the circus stopped in St. Thomas, a booming rail town. After the show, Jumbo was walking with a smaller elephant down the tracks before being loaded into their train car. Unfortunately, an unscheduled oncoming Grand Trunk train struck the two elephants. The manager of Jumbo leaped free but Jumbo passed away in minutes. The smaller elephant did make it, thanks to the circus's onsite veterinarians.
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Using flower leaves to make it look like a Jungle
Photo Credit: Danielle Gadsby |
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The Red Caboose Souvenir Shop
Photo Credit: Amanda Rood |
This has all been interesting for me to research Jumbo a bit while writing this and link to stories from my childhood. All of this while appreciating getting to spend a great day of adventures and laughs with my sister.
Thank you for reading...
Sources:
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