Barn Quit Tour--Wardsville, Ontario

On Sunday afternoon, my husband, my father and I went on a Barn Quilt tour in and around Wardsville, Ontario.

All of the quilt blocks depicted an aspect of the lives of Margaret and George Ward, the founders of the community of Wardsville, population around 400 people.  George fought in the war of 1812 so this soldier block is near the site of the Battle at Longwoods.

Some of the quilt blocks were on barnsand others were on local buildings such as the one below. It is called "Carpenters Square"--George had carpentry skills which he used to build a home for his family and an inn.

Wardsville celebrated their 200th anniversary in 2010 and this Barn Quilt project was their special project to commemorate this occasion.

The Wards were not buried in this cemetery but several of their descendants are and there is a marker with many of the family names on it near this quilt block.

My father and my husband liked reading about the history of Wardsville as we did the tour. They were not as excited about the quilt blocks as I was :-).

One of the Quilt blocks was in Newbury, just north of Wardsville. Newbury's claim to fame is "Skunks Misery", a swampy area with Carolinian forest and many plant, animal and bird species.

Newbury has some very interesting park benches outside their town hall.

We will have to go back and do more exploring in the area again.  We did not see any live skunks on our Barn Quilt tour on the weekend!

As part of their bicentennial project, some women in the Wardsville area made a quilt out of the same blocks as on the Barn Quilt trail.  Here is a picture of the quilt, taken from their blog. I saw this quilt at the International Plowing Match in St. Thomas/Central Elgin in September of 2010.

If you would like to go on this barn quilt trail, you can get a map and more information at the blog.