Leaving a Legacy

A couple of weeks ago, while Helen and I were out exploring the home of Lucy Maud Montgomery, we also discovered an interesting structure a few kilometres down the road.

The Thomas Foster Memorial is located beside a cemetery, and the massive building not only contains the crypts of Thomas Foster, his wife, and daughter, it’s also a chapel where special events are held, including weekend concerts and weddings.

When Helen and I first pulled off the road to take a closer look at the Memorial, we were confronted with a tall fence and closed gates around the manicured lawn.

Not to be deterred, Helen fumbled around with the latch and footings that locked the gates in place, … until they finally squeaked open.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love going out exploring with Helen?

Unfortunately our luck ended there.

In spite of our best efforts, we were unable to get inside the building to look around.  We kept hoping that someone would be inside – preferably alive – and would offer to let us in for a quick peek … but it wasn’t to be.

The best we could do was peer around the grillwork of the massive front doors.

I’m surprised that the photo I took of the interior came out as well as it did … in spite of the mesh built into the glass.

So who was Thomas Foster, anyway?

Well, he was just a local boy who did really well for himself.  He made a large fortune in real estate, and was also briefly mayor of Toronto from 1925 to 1927.

Building the memorial was inspired by a trip Foster made to India when he visited the Taj Mahal.  The memorial was built in 1935/36 at a cost of $250,000.  Based on the calculations at DollarTimes.com, that would be the equivalent of $4.5 million today.

I’m pretty sure it’s equivalent could not be built today at a cost of $4.5 million – certainly not anywhere close to the Toronto area.

This post is part of Thursday Doors, a weekly photo feature hosted by Norm Frampton at Norm 2.0.  Norm is a friendly guy hailing from Montreal, and he loves company.  Drop in for a visit, and tell him I said ‘hi’.

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This post has been made possible through the kindness of the blogging community.  When I wrote about my technology issues, so many of you responded with best wishes and a few suggestions on how I might tackle my problems.

Joe at The Visual Chronicle sent me a youtube link that he hoped would help solve my problems with Lightroom, and give me access to my photos again.

As it turned it out, it did!!!

That link provided me with valuable information and access to another link with even more valuable information.  The combination of the two gave me the clues I needed to get my photo catalog and library to talk to one another again.

That sudden disruption you may have felt in the earth’s energy on Tuesday afternoon was likely caused by my cry of Hallelujah at the top of my lungs, followed by a brief, fumble-footed Irish jig.

This blogging community is the best, and so is Joe!