Wainfleet Historical Society

09/03/2026

09/03/2026

09/02/2026

🍂It's almost Autumn at The Brown Homestead🍄

👨‍🌾Start the season off right with our Rural Niagara Speaker Series with:
The Gardens of Art and Archetecture presented by Dr. Deena Errampalli, and
Japanese Canadian Farm Labourers presented by Historian Stephanie Bangarth
https://thebrownhomestead.ca/grow-at-the-homestead

🌞Dont miss crafts, lawn games and more at the last Summer Saturday open house
https://thebrownhomestead.ca/summer-saturdays

🛠️Get hands on with our Timber Framing Workshop!
https://thebrownhomestead.ca/timber-framing-workshop

09/02/2026

On this day in Canada…

Terry Fox set out from St. John's, Newfoundland, on April 12th 1980 and covered 5,373 km in 143 days — an average of 42 km (26 miles) per day. He was forced to stop his Marathon of Hope outside Thunder Bay, Ontario, on September 1st 1980, when cancer had invaded his lungs. Terry passed away exactly one month before his 23rd birthday on June 28, 1981. During his original 1980 Marathon of Hope, Terry Fox raised $24.17 million. He set out with the ultimate goal of collecting $1 from every Canadian citizen, a dream officially realized on February 1, 1981, when the fundraising total matched Canada's population of 24.1 million.
Daniel G. Wiest, Owner & Publisher
Dan Wiest Around The Community

09/01/2026

In 1962, Tommy Douglas started Canada's first public healthcare plan. Over 90% of Saskatchewan's doctors immediately went on strike.

They called the plan 'socialized medicine' and said it threatened their freedom. Douglas knew the fight was personal.

A childhood bone infection nearly cost him his leg because his family couldn't afford a specialist. As premier, he promised care for everyone.

When doctors walked out, his government opened 25 community clinics. Volunteers and women with medical training kept them running for 23 hot summer days.

The strike ended when doctors won the right to work outside the public system. Almost none of them ever used that option.

Saskatchewan's success convinced the rest of Canada to adopt the same model within two years.

09/01/2026

On this day in 1905, Alberta and Saskatchewan became provinces. Both were carved out of the Northwest Territories. They were the first new provinces since Prince Edward Island joined Canada in 1873, and the last until Newfoundland and Labrador in 1949.

09/01/2026

Wainfleet Historical Society will be selling 2027 Wainfleet Historical Calendars at Wainfleet Farmers' Market Tue. Sept. 1, 2026, 7 to 9 pm in the pavilion behind the arena. Come out pick up your 2027 calendar and browse the Farmers' Market. Support Local.

08/30/2026

08/30/2026

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, three physicians at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto were working on one of the most pressing problems in pediatric medicine: infant malnutrition. Rickets, the bone disease caused by vitamin D deficiency, was still common in Canadian children. Iron deficiency anaemia was widespread. Many infants were being fed on gruels and porridges that were nutritionally incomplete, required laborious preparation, and were often contaminated during cooking. Frederick Tisdall, Theodore Drake, and William Goldie decided to design a better infant food from first principles. They wanted something precooked, requiring only the addition of warm water to prepare, stable enough to store without refrigeration, affordable enough for families of any income level, and nutritionally complete enough to prevent the deficiencies they were treating every day. The cereal they developed combined wheat meal, oatmeal, cornmeal, wheat germ, dried brewer's yeast, and powdered alfalfa leaf, and was enriched with iron, calcium, phosphorus, and vitamins. They named it Pablum, derived from the Latin pabulum meaning food or nourishment. The Hospital for Sick Children filed the patent and licensed the product to the Mead Johnson company for commercial production in 1932, with the agreement that all royalties would be returned to the hospital's research program. The royalties were substantial. Over the following two decades Pablum royalties funded the hospital's research division almost entirely. The product itself spread rapidly across North America and then to markets in Europe and beyond. The reduction in infant rickets that followed its adoption was documented and significant. Pablum became so synonymous with infant feeding that the word entered the English language as a common noun. Three Toronto pediatricians invented the first truly complete infant food, refused to profit personally from it, and changed the outcomes for infants across the Western world.