Over 400 local residents and out of town visitors attended the Bell Homstead’s 150th Anniversary Garden Party on Saturday, July 27, 2024.
The celebration was held to honour the legacy of Alexander Graham Bell and his invention of the telephone, and the garden party was just one of the events planned for the “Thanks Mr. Bell” weekend series.
Many visitors were sure to arrive early to grab a spot on the front lawn, enjoy refreshments such as Bell’s favourite drink, raspberry vinegar, as well as cookies and other sweet desserts.
To kick off the event, Brian Wood, Curator of the Bell Homestead, welcomed guests with a short history about Bell and his home.
“You’re all on the very site where Alexander Graham Bell, at age 27, discovered the basic principle for the telephone. It wasn’t here in his parents’ house, but down on the banks of the Grand River at a spot he called his dreaming place,” said Wood. “On a day like today, that is where you’d find him right now. After noontime dinner, he took a blanket and a pillow, and off he went to his dreaming place to work on his ideas, one of which became that device that I guarantee most of you are carrying with you right now.”
Wood went on to say that while the homestead now resides in the City of Brantford, back in 1870, it was part of the Brantford Township.
“This house has been a museum since 1910 and we know it’s the second oldest historic home museum in Ontario. We are so happy that the Bell family decided to make Brantford their home back in 1870 however, this wasn’t quite right in Brantford back then,” he said. “This was a farm four miles out of town and back then, it was a place called Tutelo Heights which was in Brantford Township, and so both the City of Brantford and the County of Brant are celebrating this amazing anniversary with us today.”
Both David Bailey, Mayor for the County of Brant, and Kevin Davis, Mayor for the City of Brantford approached the podium to speak about Bell and afterward, Wood invited Elsie Myers Martin, Alexander Graham Bell’s great granddaughter, to the podium to say a few words.
“It is really a great honor and a pleasure for me to be here. …I bring many greetings from my cousins and siblings,” she said. “I also bring a message of gratitude, and that gratitude is that here at the Bell Homestead in Brantford, you tell the story of the telephone and of Alexander Graham Bell accurately and the way it was. It’s not embellished and there’s no falsehood so we want to really thank you for that.”
She then introduced five young performers and their rendition of an interpretive dance choreographed by Myers Martin called “Nature had the Answer: An Ode to the Telephone.”
After the performance, several dignitaries, Wood, Myers Martin and Bryce McDonald, a Bell Canada dealer, headed over to the Henderson house to participate in a ribbon cutting ceremony and unveil the Homestead’s new telephone exhibit, “Life on the Line: The evolution of the Bell Telephone.” The new exhibit chronicles the physical evolution of the telephone and was designed to connect visitors with nostalgic phone models of their past.
As guests began filing into the Henderson house to check out the new exhibit and share their memories about the various telephone models, the Telephone City Musical Society began playing a host of songs in dedication to the telephone.
While the afternoon garden party started slowing down, many guests stuck around or came back later in the evening to watch Brant Theatre Workshops’ performance of “Helen, Annie and Alec,” written by Sharyl Hudson.
The play followed the touching and sincere story of Helen Keller and her two teachers, Annie Sullivan and Alexander Graham Bell, and how they helped change her life forever.
Throughout the play, the various actors captured the close bond shared between Keller and Sullivan and how Bell’s teachings opened doors for the young Keller.
To end out the series of free events, over 100 people participated in the Telephone Trail Trek Challenge on Sunday. Many braved the heat to walk, run or bike the 18-kilometre distance of the world’s first long-distance telephone call made from Brantford’s Harmony Square to Paris, Ontario.
At the end of the trek, many stuck around the Paris Museum and Historical Society for a free tour and refreshments.
Overall, Wood said he was thrilled with the weekend’s turnout and couldn’t have been happier to be a part of it.
“The turnout, especially today, has been amazing. We had people already starting to scope out a seat an hour before we opened,” he said. “I’m overwhelmed at the response and one of my biggest goals, especially here in the community, is to get people to come back to the site, so the fact that we can bring people back for an event like this and celebrate something that is so important to the whole community, and not just Brantford, but Brant County too, is so amazing. I am thrilled to have had the chance to do all of this, it’s definitely a highlight of my career.”
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
