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The following excerpt is from Sandra Campbell’s Both Hands: A Life of Lorne Pierce of Ryerson Press.
In the eastern Ontario village of Delta, on gables and eaves atop the rosy brick of the old buildings, sheets of patterned tin siding sold by Edward Pierce’s hardware business still gleam in the sun. The sheeting was installed long ago, some of it by the merchant’s son Lorne well before the First World War.
The former storefront of the Pierce hardware business, which the elder Pierce sold to his neighbour Austin Sweet in 1923 – its handsome facade and white-framed windows little altered, although the premises are shabby now – can still be seen. The storefront is part of the most substantial commercial edifice on Delta’s winding Main Street – the two-storey brick Jubilee Business Block, erected in 1897. Delta lies in the verdant, rolling mixed farmland of Leeds County, along the St Lawrence River just northwest of Brockville – in the former Bastard Township (now part of Rideau Lakes Township).
Lithographs of Queen Victoria and other long-dead worthies still look down sombrely from the walls of the meeting room of Delta’s town hall, beneath the pressed tin ceiling of the room. Nearby lies a brace of churches and the substantial old stone grist mill, now a museum. During Lorne Pierce’s boyhood in the 1890s, the mill machinery filled the gravel streets of the village with humming. Not far away is the red-brick Methodist church – since 1925, Delta United Church – the centre of spiritual and social life for Lorne Pierce’s mother, Harriet Singleton Pierce, and her family from the 1880s. Stained-glass windows, pulpit, and communion table, all the gift of Lorne and his sister, Sara, in honour of their parents, grace the interior of the present structure, which dates from 1888–89.
(…)
Lorne Pierce was born in Delta on 3 August 1890. Delta and his family shaped him in important ways. There his mother and father gave him a particular sense of community, a distinct identity, a sense of the nation, and a strong spiritual faith. Above all, his upbringing instilled in him a drive and work ethic that formed the nucleus of his being. That drive was at once his blessing and his curse, and the engine of his future contributions to the culture of Canada as editor and man of letters.
The Delta United Church is celebrating its 185th anniversary this Sunday!
Sandra Campbell will be signing copies of Both Hands at the service.
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To learn more about Both Hands, or to order online, click here.
For media inquiries, contact MQUP publicist Jacqui Davis.
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