The Kinmount community is still reeling following the recent loss of one of its greatest champions.
Longtime teacher and historian, Guy Scott, died April 15 at age 70. The son of Betty and Bill Scott, Guy was the fifth generation of Scotts in Kinmount, along with his sister, Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock MPP Laurie Scott.
Laurie Scott told The Highlander during an April 27 interview that her brother had numerous health challenges over the past five years, but it was a recent sickness, that developed over about six weeks, that took him.
“Guy was Guy right until the end. I saw him about 12 hours before he passed, we had dinner together and he was still talking about his next project,” Laurie said. “He was still uncovering new things he didn’t know about the history of the area. He just loved that stuff. He never stopped, right up to his last day.”
Seven years her elder, Laurie said Guy was always a great influence during her childhood. They spent a lot of time together on a family farm on Crystal Lake Road. As a teen, he coached her baseball team and was always quick to teach her about the family’s rich history in the area.
As he got older, Guy’s ties to Kinmount only strengthened. He had a lifelong love affair with the Kinmount Fair, where he was a two-time president. He also served as the provincial president of the Ontario Association of Agricultural Societies. Laurie said Guy, who was known as ‘the spirit of Kinmount’, inherited his enthusiasm for the fair from their father, seeing it as the ultimate celebration of community.
He served as editor of the Kinmount Gazette for many years and volunteered his time with the Trent Lakes Historical Society, Kinmount Artisans Guild, Haliburton Highlands Genealogical Group and the Kinmount Masonic Lodge. Guy also spent 10 years as a municipal councillor in the old Galway-Cavendish township that later amalgamated into Trent Lakes.
Not content to simply talk history, Guy made every effort to record it too. He wrote several books, including The History of Kinmount: A Community on the Fringe, The Story of the Kinmount Fair, and Where Duty Leads: The 109th Battalion in WWI that detailed his grandfather’s experiences fighting in Europe.
Guy fought to preserve the community’s railway station, which now serves as a museum, and has helped shed light on Kinmount’s historic ties with Iceland. Through his research, Guy learned about a large group of new Canadians who arrived from Iceland in September 1874, to work on the Victoria railway line. The immigrants established Hayford, a ghost town along the Burnt River that Guy discovered and took many groups of Icelandic descendants to see after he wrote about it in his history of Kinmount.
Janice Stange, chair of the Trent Lakes Historical Society, said Guy’s death has been a shock to everyone.
“He was our enthusiastic go-to for any stories and information from the past. Even in these days of technology, he was our link to classic north country history,” Stange said. “We’ll never be able to say enough about his contributions to the area and its history. It’s a different world without him.”
Laurie said her brother was a family man at heart – devoted to his wife, Lori, and their children. He’ll also be remembered as a pioneer in digital education after serving for many years as a history and civics teacher with the Virtual Learning Centre.
It will be his many contributions to Kinmount that Guy will be most remembered for, Laurie said.
“He believed in this community – he used to say if you love the place you live enough, it becomes the centre of your universe. That describes how Guy felt about Kinmount,” Laurie said. “I’ll miss being able to pick up the phone and call him, because he usually had the answer to any question I had.”
A celebration of life will be held at the Kinmount Fairgrounds Arena May 9, with visitation from noon and ceremony at 1:30 p.m.
