The Tillsonburg Branch, 1957–by 1968

No history of the Tillsonburg Branch was written while it ran, and no dissolution notice for it survives the way one does for Barrie and Belleville in 1985. What follows is assembled from the branch's own reports and officer lists, 1957–1962, and from a single retrospective sentence of 1979, seventeen years after its last trace in the newsletters. Every claim below names the issue and page it comes from.

A town the Society already knew

Tillsonburg had a place in the Society's affairs before it had a branch. In the spring of 1953 the Society's Travelling Craft Exhibition toured the country, and its Ontario stops included “Tillsonburg, High School” alongside Kingston's Queen's University Museum and the Winnipeg Canadian Handicrafts Guild. (Spring 1953, page 8.) The same issue reports that Margaret Jennings, a London executive member, “was honored recently by a commission from the Town of Tillsonburg, to make a leather cover for an album to be presented to the Rt. Hon. Vincent Massey, Governor General of Canada, on the occasion of his official visit there in March” — bound in mission grain steerhide, with the decorative motif drawn from the town's own arms. (Spring 1953, page 14.) Neither notice mentions a branch; both show the town already turning to leathercraft, and to the Society, four years before one existed there.

• Formed in 1957; Edith Melchior of Tillsonburg named, in a 1979 retrospective, as instrumental in its formation
• By April 1958 had nineteen members, meeting at Tillsonburg District High School
• Scored 109.8 of a possible 168 points for the 1958 Weston Guild Trophy, the second of its two recorded entries, against Hamilton, London and the winner, Toronto
• Sent members to the Society's first Eastern Regional Meeting, Vineland, 1958, and to a joint workshop with the Hamilton Guild, November 1961
• Chaired by Mrs. Florence Sawyer in 1962 — the branch's last appearance in the surviving newsletters — and dissolved by 1968, before the Woodstock branch formed

Formed in time for the 1957 Annual Meeting

The branch's earliest trace in the newsletters is a judge's compliment. The Board of Selection's review of the Weston Guild Trophy entries at the Annual Meeting of April 1957 was mostly a contest between Hamilton and London — London won — but closes its account of the field with: “Tillsonburg, too, offered a very creditable display, for so new a Branch of a small membership.” (Spring 1957, page 5.) That is the branch's first appearance in the newsletters, already entering work for judging, which puts its founding in early 1957 or, just possibly, the last weeks of 1956. Twenty-two years later, a profile of one of its own members stated the date and the founder outright: “In 1957 Edith was instrumental in the formation of the Tillsonburg Branch of C.S.C.L.” (Spring 1979, page 1.) Edith Melchior, the subject of that profile, already has her own page on this site; she had joined the Society in 1953–54, taught leathercraft in Tillsonburg's high schools and her own home from 1953, and took her Associate standing in 1956 — the year before the branch she is credited with forming.

Nineteen members, and a school room to meet in

By the autumn the branch had a settled routine: “TILLSONBURG: Meets second Thursday of each month at Tillsonburg District High School, Room 12.” (Autumn 1957, page 4.) At the Annual Meeting the following spring it gave its first full report: “Tillsonburg has 19 members and organized a display at Tillsonburg and Aylmer Fall Fairs.” (Spring 1958, page 3.) The same issue's branch directory gives the way to reach it — “Meets second Thursday of each month except July, August and September. For place and particulars, contact Mrs. Glen Whitesell, Concession St. E., Tillsonburg, Phone VIctor 2-4098” (Spring 1958, page 4) — the courtesy form the Society commonly used for a married woman's own name; no paper gives her own first name, so she is left as the newsletter prints her.

The Weston Guild Trophy, 1958

Tillsonburg entered the Society's branch competition again the next year. Dr. Larmour scored each branch's six pieces out of a possible 168 points: “Hamilton, 144.6; London, 116; Tillsonburg, 109.8; Toronto, 151.6.” Toronto took the Trophy. (Spring 1958, page 9.) Fourth of four is not a discouraging score for a branch not yet two years old competing against Hamilton, London and Toronto, all long established; no further Trophy entry for Tillsonburg appears in the surviving newsletters after 1958. (See the Weston Trophy roll.)

Out among the wider Society

That same summer, Tillsonburg was one of ten centres represented when “about 200 leathercraftsmen gathered at Vineland, Ont., for the first Eastern Regional Meeting of Leathercraftsmen,” alongside Barrie, Chatham, Guelph, Hamilton, London, Niagara Falls, St. Catharines, Toronto and Welland in Ontario, and Buffalo, Cleveland, Dearborn, Flint and Rochester across the border. (Summer 1958, page 11.) Three years later the branch shared a meeting of its own with a neighbour: “The Hamilton Guild played host to the Tillsonburg Guild on Saturday, November 11th,” with Mrs. Edith Melchior conducting an afternoon session on suede poinsettias and Mr. Frank Torry a Christmas-box workshop that evening, a smorgasbord supper serving “almost 50 persons.” (Autumn 1961, page 3.) The newsletter calls both groups “Guild” in that one report — the Society used “branch” and “guild” for the same kind of local body throughout this period, Hamilton's own branch being formally the Hamilton Leathercraft Guild.

A chairman in 1962, then nothing

The Society's executive list for 1962–63 names a chairman for each branch, and Tillsonburg’s reads: “Tillsonburg: Mrs. Florence Sawyer.” (Spring 1962, page 12.) No later newsletter names a Tillsonburg officer, meeting place or report. Robert Muma's own history of the Society's first ten years, written in 1960 for the Society's tenth anniversary, still counted Tillsonburg among the branches then standing — “a number of Branches in Toronto, Hamilton, London, Peterborough, Tillsonburg, Barrie and Petrolia” (Spring 1960, page 7, reprinted unaltered at the twenty-fifth anniversary in 1975) — but that essay is dated by its own writing to 1960, two years before the branch's last appearance here, and cannot be read as reporting on 1962 or after.

After the branch: the Fair, and Edith Melchior, went on

The surviving newsletters print no notice of the branch closing. The only statement of it is retrospective, in the same 1979 profile that named its founding: “After the Tillsonburg branch dissolved she continued as a member at large until the Woodstock branch formed.” (Spring 1979, page 1.) The Woodstock branch formed in 1968, so the Tillsonburg branch's end falls somewhere in the six years between its last-named officer, in 1962, and that date — a bracket, not a year, and this page states it as one. The town's own fair outlived the branch: when the Woodstock branch — which Edith Melchior helped found and which several former Tillsonburg-area members joined — gave its report for the 1973 season, it recorded that “we participated in the Tillsonburg Art and Craft Fair in October.” (Winter 1973, page 4.) The event Tillsonburg's own branch once exhibited at, in its first year, was still on the Society's calendar more than a decade later, carried forward by the branch that took its members in.

Assembled from Spring 1953 pp8 and 14, Spring 1957 p5, Autumn 1957 p4, Spring 1958 pp3, 4 and 9, Summer 1958 p11, Autumn 1961 p3, Spring 1962 p12, Spring 1960 p7, Winter 1973 p4, and Spring 1979 p1.