My wife Linda (Cairns) Wallace met her 3rd cousin Eva (Cairns) Westbrook for the first time almost two years ago, at Eva's home north-west of Nobleton, in King Township. Eva was 94 years old and my wife was almost three decades her junior, but they were of the same generation of an extended Cairns family and they were both great-great-granddaughters of Thomas and Ann Cairns of Campbeltown, Argyll, Scotland. My wife's great-great grandfather, William Cairns, and his much older brother Adam Cairns, came to Canada in the first half of the 19th century and settled on a farm which is now part of Cold Creek Conservation Area, on the 11th Concession of King Township. Five generations and more than a century-and-a-half later, the two Cairns cousins, Linda and Eva, never knew of each other. By chance, they did come to know each other and a meeting took place. One of the outcomes of that fateful get-together was a sharing of photographs by Eva, who apologized for having so few old Cairns photographs. With so many siblings through so many generations, old photos became scarce. What Eva did share with Linda were some photos from the mid-1900s when she and her husband, Harold (Mike) Westbrook operated the Nobleton Meat Market on Highway 27, in the centre of the village. Those pictures are the ones you see here.
Mike Westbrook is pictured shortly before his death in 1961, at the age 48. His widow, Eva, is now 96 years of age and lives in the country near the abbatoir that her husband Mike operated in connection with the butcher shop in the village. Pictured below is a new photo of the building that was once the Nobleton Meat Market.
Photo by Barry Wallace
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Barry Wallace
