Letters to the Honourable John H. Dunn, 1837-1838

The recipient of the letters is John Henry Dunn who was born on St. Helena (a British territory island of volcanic origin located in the South Atlantic Ocean) in 1792 to John Charles Dunn and Elizabeth Bazette. He was married to Charlotte Roberts on May 4th, 1820 and they had 6 sons and 2 daughters. He came to Canada in 1820 in which year he became the Receiver General for Canada. He held this position until 1841.Charlotte died in 1835. In 1822 he was named to the Province’s Legislative Council. He was president of the Welland Canal Company from 1825-1833. In 1836 he was named to the executive council of Upper Canada but resigned 3 weeks later with fellow counselors when lieutenant governor Sir Francis Bond refused the advice of the council. Dunn was made the Receiver General for the newly formed Province of Canada in 1841, and was elected to represent Toronto in the legislative assembly that year. He married his second wife on March 9th, 1842. Her name was Sophie-Louise Juchereau Duchsnay. They had a son and a daughter. In 1843 he resigned, and was not re-elected in 1844. He returned to England with his family and died in London on April 21, 1854. Dunn was a supporter of the Welland Canal, St. Lawrence Canals and other public improvements. Between the passage of the Canada Trade Act and the Act of the Union he had tried to insure that projects received funding despite financial constraints. He claimed that he has saved Upper Canada from bankruptcy. His son, Alexander Roberts Dunn received the Victoria Cross for his role in the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava. Dunn Street in Niagara Falls is named after John Henry Dunn. The town and township of Dunnville were also named for him. Sources: http://biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?id_nbr=3889 http://www.niagarafrontier.com/cityfalls.html

Lt. Col. John Clark Papers, 1838-1851 [photocopy]

Lt. Col. John Clark (1787-1862) was born in Kingston, Upper Canada. In 1801 Clark became a private in the 1st regiment of the Lincoln Militia, serving under Ralfe Clench. By June 1812 he was promoted to lieutenant by Maj. Gen. Sir Isaac Brock. During the War of 1812 he served as lieutenant and adjutant for the Lincoln Militia flank company on the Niagara frontier under Col. William Claus, and was present at the surrender of the enemy at the battle of Queenston Heights. By 1838 the Lincoln Militia was being re-organized and Lt. Col John Clark was requested to lead the 5th Regiment, made up of men from both Grantham and Louth townships in Lincoln County. He served in this capacity until his retirement in 1851?. Around this same time Clark bought from William May Jr. a house in Grantham Township. He was to call his home Walnut Dale Farm. John Clark also served as the customs collector for Port Dalhousie, and as a secretary in the Welland Canal Company. One hundred years later efforts by a local heritage group to save John Clark’s home failed, when the house was hit by arsonists. By this time the house had become known as the May-Clark-Seiler House. See RG 195 Anne Taylor Fonds for more information regarding the efforts of the heritage group to save this home. Clark died in 1862 at the age of 79 years and is buried in Victoria Lawn Cemetery. John Clark’s daughter Catherine (mentioned in the diary portion of the papers) was married to William Morgan Eccles.

Colonel John Butler (Niagara)/St. Catharines District Branch of the United Empire Loyalists fonds

United Empire Loyalist is an honour given to American Loyalists who came to British North America and the British Colonies to show their loyalty to King George III after the British defeat in the American Revolution. The Loyalists settled in Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia and modern day New Brunswick. The Colonel John Butler (Niagara) Branch (formerly the St. Catharines and District Branch) has origins which date as far back as 1898. A branch was organized in Virgil by Captain John D. Servos, but was unsuccessful. In 1905 there was another attempt to form a branch, but the war of 1914-1918 resulted in this branch becoming inactive. In 1914, an Act of Parliament incorporated the United Empire Loyalists’ Association of Canada. The St. Catharines and District Branch was formed in 1921. This branch remained active, and in 1992 they changed their name to The Colonel John Butler (Niagara) Branch. The Loyalists also have a strong focus on genealogy. All descendants are eligible to use UE (which stands for Unity of the Empire) after their names. source: http://www.coljohnbutleruel.com

Contract between John Cronyn and Nelson Forsyth, December 16, 1854.

John Cronyn (1827-1898) emigrated to Canada from Ireland in 1837. He studied medicine at the University of Toronto, but was not granted his degree upon completion of the requirements. He refused to take the test oaths meant to exclude Catholics from the profession and was not granted his degree until several years later, when the discriminatory laws were rescinded. In 1850, he married Elizabeth Willoughby of Toronto. They settled in Fort Erie and he established a successful medical practice there. He was active in the community, serving as Superintendent of schools and one term as Reeve. In 1859 he relocated to Buffalo and continued to practice medicine there. Cronyn was instrumental in the establishment of a medical department at Niagara University, where he was a professor and president of faculty. Nelson Forsyth was the son of William Forsyth (1771-1841), a prominent businessman in Niagara who owned and operated the Pavilion Hotel (later known as Forsyth’s Inn). Nelson was also a businessman and lived in Fort Erie with his wife Archange Warren.

Marriage Bond between John Smith of Glanford in the Gore district and Jane Atkins of Ancaster

Marriage Bond between John Smith of Glanford in the Gore district and Jane Atkins of Ancaster signed by Edmund Smith of Ancaster and Jeremiah Smith of Glanford, Jan. 17, 1837.

Appointment of John B. Parkynn [Parkin] (J.P. Bradley’s brother) to be an Ensign of the 1st Company of the Royal Quebec Volunteers

Appointment of John B. Parkynn [Parkin] (J.P. Bradley’s brother) to be an Ensign of the 1st Company of the Royal Quebec Volunteers. This is signed by the Governor General, the Earl of Gosford and Governor General, Secretary J. Walcott, Nov. 27, 1837.

John Kaethler

International Student Advisor John Kaethler at his desk.

Dr. John Lye

Professor of English, John Lye, walking through Mackenzie Chown A Block.

Dr. John Jackson

Professor of Geography.

John Marchese

John Marchese was an arts student and was the first Manager of the Brock Student Pub operated out of Alfie's Trough which was our first student center paid for by the students and built in 1969. It had its grand opening in 1970.

Home schooling in view of John Calvin : a study in education and communion of saints /

This study explores the tension that has emerged around the rise of home schooling in a faith-community strongly committed to establishing and maintaining day schools in the tradition of John Calvin. It aims to identify and understand factors that contributed to this tension and to find ways to bridge, diffuse, reduce, or eliminate it. In line with Calvin, personal convictions, and the nature of the community, the study takes a Christian epistemological and axiological stance. Its premise is that the integrity of the commvmity is more important than the manner in which its children are taught. The study reviews relevant literature and several interviews. It considers both secular and Christian literature to understand communities, community breakdown, and community restoration. It also examines literature about the significance of home, school, and community relationships; the attraction of Reformed day schools; and the appeal of home schooling. Interviews were conducted with 4 home schooling couples and 2 focus groups. One focus group included local school representatives, and the other home schoolers and school representatives from an area with reputedly less tension on the issue. Interviews were designed for participants to give their perspectives on reasons for home schooling, the existing tension, and ways to resolve the issues. The study identifies the rise of home schooling in this particular context as the initial issue and the community's deficiency to properly deal with it as the chief cause for the rising tensions. However, I argue that, within the norms the community firmly believes in, home schooling need not jeopardize its integrity. I call for personal, social, and spiritual renewal to restore the covenant community in gratitude to God.

Opening truth to imagination : the pragmatism of John Dewey and Richard Rorty

This study explores in a comparative way the works of two American pragmatist philosophers-John Dewey and Richard Rorty. I have provided a reading of their broader works in order to offer what I hope is a successful sympathetic comparison where very few exist. Dewey is often viewed as the central hero in the classical American pragmatic tradition, while Rorty, a contemporary pragmatist, is viewed as some sort of postmodern villain. I show that the different approaches by the two philosophers-Dewey's experiential focus versus Rorty's linguistic focus-exist along a common pragmatic continuum, and that much of the critical scholarship that pits the two pragmatists against each other has actually created an unwarranted dualism between experience and language. I accomplish this task by following the critical movement by each of the pragmatists through their respective reworking of traditional absolutist truth conceptions toward a more aesthetical, imaginative position. I also show how this shift or "turning" represents an important aspect of the American philosophical tradition-its aesthetic axis. I finally indicate a role for liberal education (focusing on higher nonvocational education) in accommodating this turning, a turning that in the end is necessitated by democracy's future trajectory

Educating for love of wisdom : John Dewey and Simone Weil

The writings of John Dewey (1859-1952) and Simone Weil (1909-1943) were analyzed with a view to answering 3 main questions: What is wisdom? How is wisdom connected to experience? How does one educate for a love of wisdom? Using a dialectical method whereby Dewey (a pragmatist) was critiqued by Weil (a Christian Platonist) and vice versa, commonalities and differences were identified and clarified. For both, wisdom involved the application of thought to specific, concrete problems in order to secure a better way of life. For Weil, wisdom was centered on a love of truth that involved a certain way of applying one's attention to a concrete or theoretical problem. Weil believed that nature was subject to a divine wisdom and that a truly democratic society had supernatural roots. Dewey believed that any attempt to move beyond nature would stunt the growth of wisdom. For him, wisdom could be nourished only by natural streams-even if some ofthem were given a divine designation. For both, wisdom emerged through the discipline of work understood as intelligent activity, a coherent relationship between thinking and acting. Although Weil and Dewey differed on how they distinguished these 2 activities, they both advocated a type of education which involved practical experience and confronted concrete problems. Whereas Dewey viewed each problem optimistically with the hope of solving it, Weil saw wisdom in, contemplating insoluble contradictions. For both, educating for a love of wisdom meant cultivating a student's desire to keep thinking in line with acting-wanting to test ideas in action and striving to make sense of actions observed.