Hespeler’s history buff wins provincial honour
CAMBRIDGE — Lary Turner, 74, only carries one “r” in his exceptionally spelled first name. He’s not your typical two-r Larry.
Naturally, a singular story lurks behind that consonantal curiosity for Hespeler’s resident historian who will receive a Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Lifetime Achievement at Queen’s Park on Friday.
“That’s kind of a strange thing, actually,” Turner said of the curious tale.
How curious? Let’s go back to 1962.
Young Lawrence Turner of Sackville, N.B., was not yet the chair of The Company of Neighbours Hespeler Heritage Centre in the old town hall.
He was not yet the white-bearded curator of 10,000 artifacts from a few hundred years of Bergeytown-New Hope-Hespeler goingson.
He hadn’t even served his eight volunteer years on the board of the Waterloo Regional Heritage Foundation.
Nor had he married Shirley, a Hespeler girl and his wife of 50 years, or purchased their home of 47 years across from Ellacott
Lookout. They’d not yet raised a son and three daughters from their Queen Street perch with a front-porch view of the Speed River.
Turner, 56 years ago, was just a New Brunswick boy who had ventured west with a buddy for an Ontario vacation that never ended.
He’d taken a job at a textile mill in Galt, where his sister and her family lived.
Turner had spent many childhood summers staying with his sister and bicycling around what would become Cambridge with his nephew.
Turner knew Galt. But at the Newlands textile factory, he was a newbie and the young fellas he worked with didn’t like the formal sound of his full first name.
After all, the movie “Lawrence of Arabia” premièred that year.
His family had always called him Lawrence. But not even a hint of epic pomposity wouldn’t fly here with his new coworkers in a job he would escape in just five weeks.
“They seemed to think that Lawrence sounded like a title,” recalled Turner, who went on to work 34 years at the Hespeler and Preston post offices and joined The Company of Neighbours in 1994.
“So they started calling me Lary. For some reason, they wrote it out that way (with one ‘r’) and it’s been that way ever since.”
Today, Lawrence still goes by Lary. The locals still bring their freshly discovered artifacts to him and the Company of Neighbours, his labour of love.
A bayonet and scabbard, perhaps from the First World War, was found in the gutted wall of a house overlooking Forbes Park, just a few weeks ago.
“It looks like its been in the wall since 1918,” Turner said, marvelling at the relic now resting in a glass display case. “It looks great.”
On Friday, Turner aims to look sharp too. He’ll go to Toronto to get a lapel pin and a framed certificate for his heritage efforts around Hespeler, Cambridge and beyond. The Region of Waterloo nominated him.
Hopefully, those Ontario Heritage Award mementos he gets will say “Lawrence” or “Lary” on them.
Just not Larry.