Unpublished Newswire

The Built Heritage Committee approved a heritage designation for the former Ellis House at 2400 Bank Street. The property meets three of nine criteria for designation under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act. The two-and-a-half-storey, red brick farmhouse is one of the last remaining examples of a nineteenth century farmhouse in the area. The property was settled and farmed by four successive generations of the Tompkins-Ellis family, one of many farming families who cleared and settled the agricultural land in Gloucester Township. The Ellis House is also associated with the former rural...

When Donald Oliver was growing up in Wolfville, N.S., as part of the only Black family in town, racism wasn’t just a concept, it was a daily experience. He knew what it meant to walk into classrooms, grocery stores and restaurants and be treated as lesser. A half-century later, when he swore the oath of office in 1990 as the first Black man appointed to the Senate, it meant more than recognition of his distinguished career and his community leadership. It carried the weight of history, proving that the walls that once shut him out could be broken.