Past Exhibit:
Gregory Family of Lindsay
Past exhibit: May 2019 to October 2019
This exhibit highlights a few of the members of the Gregory family and their impact on the town of Lindsay and beyond.
Images in this exhibit are from the Gregory family and our collection.
Edmund and Mary Gregory
When Edmund Gregory (1831-1892) came to Canada from England in 1854, he first lived in Millbrook, but soon settled in Lindsay where he established a chemistry business at the north-east corner of Kent and William Streets. After the business was destroyed in the great fire of 1861, he rebuilt at the same location in what was known as the Knowlson Block.
On June 4, 1867, Edmund married Mary Wright (1849-1936), the oldest daughter from another strongly Wesleyan Methodist family in Lindsay. They built their first house on the south-west corner of Cambridge and Francis Streets, where Edmund owned the eastern half of the block. Edmund and Mary had five sons and one daughter: Alfred Edmund, Herbert, Glyde, Keele, Frank, and Ethelwyn. Later, the family built a new house next door and moved there.
In 1869, Mary donated part of their land for the construction of the Methodist church–what would become Cambridge Street United Church. When the church was dedicated on December 17, 1871, Edmund was superintendent of the Sunday School.
In addition to his work at the pharmacy, Edmund was active in the community: he was elected as a school trustee for the North Ward; he was an active curler and served as second on J.D. Flavelle’s rink; he was a founding director of the Mechanic’s Institute, which would become the Lindsay Public Library; he was a member of the Council of Lindsay Board of Trade and also on the Board of Health. The family had a cottage on Sturgeon Point.
Image courtesy of Kawartha Lakes Public Library
Edmund worked with other druggists to organize a professional association and was one of the founders of the Canadian Pharmaceutical Society in 1867. Four years later, he was a charter member of the Ontario Collage of Pharmacy, furthering his concern for establishing standards in the profession and regulations for governing the sale of poisons. He worked with the Board of Examiners for the College of Pharmacy. In 1875, his work as an analytical chemist and founder of the Ontario College of Pharmacy were recognized when the New York Pharmaceutical Association elected him to their membership.
In 1967, Morley Newport submitted his thesis about Edmund Gregory to the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto.
Children:
01
Ethelwyn Gregory (1868-1951)
Music Teacher
02
Alfred Edmund Gregory (1869-1950)
Graduated from the College in 1890 and managed the Gregory Pharmacy from 1892 until his retirement in 1938.
03
Herbert Gregory (1872-1950)
Became a druggist in Oshawa, Owen Sound, Collingwood and Stratford.
04
Glyde Gregory (1874-1951)
Engineer
05
Keele Gregory (1880-1956)
Became a druggist in Toronto and married Addie Sylvester (1880-1936), one of the first female graduates of the Ontario College of Pharmacy.
06
Frank Gregory (1883-1962)
Managed a hardware store
E. Neill and Ada Greaves Gregory
Items from our collection
Son of Alfred Edmund Gregory and Mary Agnes Southwell Neill (1869-1956), E. Neill Gregory (1898-1974), served in the First World War in the Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Air Force. On his return, he graduated from the Ontario College Pharmacy and later assumed control of Gregory’s Drug Store from his father.
E. Neill had other business interests and founded Superior Fuels Ltd., served as chairman of the Lindsay Cemetery Board and the Ross Memorial Hospital Board of Governors, president of the Lindsay Curling Club and past-president of the Ontario Curling Association. He was also grand senior warden of the Masonic Grand Lodge of Canada in Ontario, a Shriner, and founded the Wardens’ Association of Victoria County.
A Radio Business
E. Neill and his brother Charles “Bill” Gregory (1909-1983) were instrumental in bringing radio communication to Lindsay in 1955 with the establishment of CKLY. They partnered with Toronto radio personality, Herb May, and formed Greg-May Broadcasting Ltd.
CKLY signed on the air on December 8, 1955 before a crowd of 200 with an opening address by Leslie Frost.
In 1923, E. Neill married Aileen Isabelle Palen (1901-1953). They had two children, Wellington Neill Gregory (1924-2000) and Mary Agnes Elizabeth Grace Gregory (1926-1981). Unfortunately, Aileen died of brain cancer in 1953.
Image courtesy of Kawartha Lakes Public Library
Ada Greaves Gregory with her dog, Crusty.
In 1960, E. Neill married his second wife, Ada Greaves Gregory (1907-1977). It was her first marriage and at the time she was an accomplished business woman with Greaves Appliances on Kent Street in Lindsay. She would go on to be the first woman to serve as a Warden of Victoria County and the second woman in the province to serve as a county warden.
She pioneered the Lindsay Parks Board, which would eventually become the Parks and Recreation division of the City of Kawartha Lakes.
She was a member of Lindsay council in 1954, deputy-reeve for 1955-56 and reeve for 1957.
Sonny Gregory
Wellington Neill Gregory was known to all as "Sonny". He graduated from the College of Pharmacy in Toronto and owned/operated a drugstore in Fenelon Falls until he sold it to Ken McArthur, who had apprenticed with E. Neill Gregory in Lindsay. Sonny then moved to Lindsay and took over from his father.
E. Neill Gregory, Bill Gregory, and Sonny Gregory all worked side by side in the drugstore until E. Neill passed in 1974. Bill and Sonny carried on until the store closed in June 1979.
Gregory Drug Store on Kent Street in Lindsay.
Alan Gregory
Alan Gregory (1926-) was born in Lindsay. His father, Frank, quit high school after Edmund’s death and began working at J.G. Edwards hardware store on Kent Street. He later moved to western Canada but returned to Lindsay in 1919 to start a hardware store. After taking over McLelland’s Hardware Store, Frank married Marie Guillet (1893-1976) in Cobourg and took up residence in a red-brick house on Cambridge Street in Lindsay. Two children followed, Donald and Alan—with Alan being born just as his father was recovering from septicemia, a form of blood poisoning.
Alan attended Alexandra School in the North Ward, and the family was active in Cambridge Street United Church. His mother was frequently a soloist at the church, and took part in plays and other artistic endeavours in the community. Under the leadership of Frank—who was later joined by his brother, Keele Gregory—the hardware business did well into the early 1930s. In 1934, at the height of the Great Depression, the family went bankrupt along with a number of other store-keeping families in the community.
“We lost everything,” says Alan. “Our house, my mother’s cherished piano, most of our furniture, [and] my father was sent along with about 700 other Lindsay men to work on roads in north Victoria County.”
After working in this environment for a while, Frank found work in Belleville and once established, the family moved there. While in Belleville, Frank managed the hardware department for the local Canadian Department Stores branch. On March 12, 1936, the Moira River rose and flooded the streets. The CDS building was damaged, and Frank lost his job in the hardware department. After three years of unstable employment, the family returned to Lindsay. Alan’s father took a job in the Liquor Control Board store on Kent Street, a job he secured through Leslie Frost.
In 2019, Alan Gregory was interviewed as part of Precious Memories: Our Seniors Speak, a project that aimed to preserve the memories of seniors local to the Kawartha Lakes area.
Alan enrolled in Grade 9 at Lindsay Collegiate Institute, where he enjoyed playing rugby and participating in the annual track-and-field days. The Second World War broke out shortly thereafter, and Alan remembers how this affected the day-to-day life of students. “We took all sorts of precautions,” he recalls. “We had to be careful, because the [Dominion] arsenal [in Lindsay] was expected to be a target, so we knew all about taking shelter, and our parents were wardens for blackouts.”
Following his graduation from LCI, Alan attended university and launched a long and illustrious career in the field of geology, focusing in particular on remote sensing and its applications in environmental mapping. Gregory Geoscience Limited was established in 1973, and Alan’s expertise was later sought out when Canada decided to participate in NASA’s Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS) programme. He also served as a Canadian advisor to the Outer Space Affairs Committee of the United Nations. In 2017, Alan relocated to his hometown of Lindsay, where he continues to share stories of his family’s longtime involvement in the civic life of Lindsay.
