Halton County

“Halton’s Heritage: William Halton and Halton County”

On Thursday night I attended a book launch for “Halton’s Heritage: William Halton and Halton County” that was written by John McDonald. This is a book about the life of William Halton after whom Halton County is named. John has also written a brief history of the towns and villages in the county.

The launch was held at the Halton Region Museum in Kelso Conservation Area near Milton, Ontario. The event started at 7 pm and continued until 9 pm.

John was autographing copies of his book for people and the crowd was much larger than they expected.

There were many dignitaries there including Halton Provincial Member of Parliament Ted Chudleigh and Milton Mayor Gordon Krantz. Gordon Krantz was representing Gary Carr the Halton Regional Chair who was not able to attend the event.

John discovered during his research that there was another coat of arms for Halton County. The current one was granted on 16 June 1976. John presented Halton Region with an artists rendering of the original coat of arms. Gordon Krantz accepted the gift on behalf of Gary Carr.

Two special guests were at the book launch. Harry Andrews, the great great nephew of William Halton, and Christine Taylor, William’s great great great niece. Christine had travelled from Brisbane Australia to attend the book launch. William died without issue and Harry and Christine are descendent from William’s sister Mary.

They had many copies of the book for sale in both hard and soft covers. They also had John’s previous publication “Halton Sketches Revisited: Historical Tales of People and Events in North Halton” available to purchase.

This book will end up under many Christmas trees this holiday season.