Trafalgar Castle School - Yearbook (Whitby, Ontario Canada)

Page 22 text:

L ' to flee for his life across the border after having been severely wounded in the struggle. He later surrendered himself and was tried for high treason, of which charge he was honourably acquitted. During middle life he held many municipal ott ' ices both in Belleville and i ' (i(lc hhgMeen

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Trafalgar Olafitlr TRAFALGAR CASTLE, whose shadow has fallen benignly upon the history of our school since its most dim beginnings, possesses a personality of its own. To those who have been privileged to spend within its friendly walls a few of the happiest years of their girlhood it pervades every memory of that time. It is not merely the place where they went to school, — it is their school. That personality however is not merely academic. It reaches back to some of the most splendid things in Canadian history. It is the symbol of the conquest of a savage country by gracious and noble civilization. Its builder left an indelible stamp upon it of his own life and character and any history however incomplete, which concerns itself with its work, must of necessity begin with his career. When from the comfortable security of our own lives in the Ontario of to-day we look back a century to those of our forefathers, the spectacle appears to be one of unremitting rigour, hardship and toil; yet in those days Romance was a constant visitor in Upper Canada as the lives of many of its citizens can testify. Nelson Gilbert Reynolds, Esq., was born in Kingston in the year 1814 in the midst of the war then raging between the United States and Canada. Before he attained his twenty-first year he had served in the army both in England and as an officer of the 54th regiment on the Hudson Bay Service, he had been elected to parliament as member for the county of Hastings and had become a householder and the head of a family — rather a remarkable record in what we scornfully term the slow days. In the rebellion of 1837 he raised and commanded a troop of horse in the interests of the government, but his loyalty was suspected and he was forced Paye Scietiteen

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Trafalgar Castle was built by him as a private residence during the period 1858-61. According to the Whitby Watchman its magnificence and its beauty were unsurpassed by any other building in the Dominion and when one looks at the lovely proportions of the rooms of the main building, the stately beauty of the hall and its staircase, the exquisite workmanship of the ceilings even now after sixty years of change, in the eyes of all those who have fallen beneath its spell, the splendid old mansion remains incomparable. No elaborate description of the size and number of the rooms or length} ' lists of the enormous amounts of building material used can adequately de- scribe the almost feudal dignity with which the castle stood out among the rambling homesteads and shops of the little town. It became the centre of the Page yinct(