I meet David Gray quite regularly for coffee (he alternates two peanut butter cookies with a bran muffin) at Tim Hortons. He also lives on the same street as I do. He often tells the story of his rather historic "quilt" and I share it on Wrights Lane, thanks to Sandy Lindsay of the Saugeen Times.
With the approach of Remembrance Day, David regaled members of Saugeen Shores Men’s Probus Club recently with the story of how the unique quilt with hundreds of hand-stitched names came into his possession. Here's the story.
In Galt (ON) when David was a young boy of 10, he belonged to what was then the ‘Karry on Kids Klub’ that consisted of 22 children ages four to ten who raised money for the wartime effort with a garden party in the mid 1940s. A quilt was made and people who wanted their name on it would pay 10 cents and a grand total of $86.00 was ultimately realized. David's sister worked on embroidering the names on the guilt.
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| David Gray making his presentation. |
When the quilt was completed, it was given to the Red Cross to be taken to a Veterans’ hospital in London, England. The understanding was that if there were any soldiers there who came from the Cambridge area in Ontario, the quilt would be put on their bed so that they could see the names and perhaps of some they knew. Stories and photographs of the quilt were carried in the Galt Reporter newspaper.
After the war was over, the quilt came back to Toronto with the Red Cross and no one knows where it went after that nor the hands it passed through
One day however, a lady in Mississauga was looking for a bed for her dog and spotted the quilt at a garage sale, paid two dollars for it and took it home. When she later looked more closely, it was then that she discovered the names stitched on it. As David explains it, further research determined that there were four families connected to the quilt located in Cambridge, Mississauga, Waterdown and Guelph. The relative in Waterdown felt that that the quilt should go back to an original owner.
Through someone in Guelph, then Kitchener and then Galt, it began to make its way back ‘home’.
Eventually David's twin brother Donald, also an original member of the Kids Club, received a telephone call at his home in Galt (Cambridge) advising him that someone had a parcel for him...and when he received the package it contained the quilt created by the Karry on Kids Klub of Galt that his sister had worked so diligently on more than 50 years prior. Donald passed away in June and David became benefactor of the quilt.
"It was a quilt that brought people together long after the war ended but it was the children in the beginning who wanted to honour the soldiers and help them financially."
“One can only wonder where the quilt has been, how many beds did it cover, who did it help and, even after what must have been countless washings, how the names are still there and visible,” David adds.
*To check out previous "older posts" just click to the right below. ⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⬇⬇⬇🔻🔻🔻
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