New Westben production based on pioneer sisters’ lives
The 68-year-old driver of a motorcycle was killed in a collision on Saturday at about 1:14 p.m. on Highway 60 in Algonquin Provincial Park near mile marker 21.
Morley Train of Barrie was pronounced dead at the scene.
His female passenger was transported to hospital with non-lifethreatening injuries, police said.
The highwasy closed for about seven hours for an investigation by OPP technical traffic collision investigators.
No other vehicles were involved.
A new Westben production takes listeners into the lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill, providing a snapshot of these two British, pioneer Canadian sisters’ lives as they settle in the wilds of Upper Canada near Lakefield in the 1830s.
Upper Canada Christmas is a narrated concert celebrating a Canadian Christmas pioneer-style, fit for the whole family and featuring the 80 voices of the Westben Choirs, Nov. 25 and 26 at The Barn, Dec. 2 at Norwood United Church and Dec. 3 at Northminster Church in Peterborough.
Susanna and Catharine, already celebrated authors in England, left us works that give honest perspectives of what life must have been like in this area in the early to mid 1800s.
Catharine describes their arrival to Rice Lake: “A motley group of emigrants shared the only available room in the log house which did duty as tavern on the shores of Rice Lake. The house consisted of but two rooms, the kitchen and a public room. There, in a corner, I rested my weary limbs while the full moonlight drifting in through the small window revealed our companions of the Cobourg stage, talking, smoking, or stretched at full length sleeping. The next morning a little steamer conveyed us across the lake and up the river to Peterborough. When it stopped to take in a supply of wood I seized the opportunity to land and gather some of the splendid cardinal flowers that grew along the shores. Here, too, I plucked as sweet a rose as ever graced an English garden. We procured the services of a little Irish lad with his lantern who guided us through the remaining bit of bush still separating us from the town.”
Their lives were difficult, courageous and fascinating. Although Catharine Parr Traill. known for the book
and Susanna Moodie, known for the book
shared many of the same experiences, their writings are incredibly different. Catharine’s writing is more lyrical in perspective and Susanna’s aimed for a more realistic, unromanticised expression of their experiences.