St. Helens

 

Location:  Huron County     N 43.90272   W -81.51005

At the corner of Belfast Road and St. Helens Line, beside the community centre.

 

 

 St. Helens is a quiet rural crossroads in the heart of a Mennonite farming community.

This memorial is best described from the following article in the Signal Star, written by David Yates and published in August 2020. 

"On Nov. 11, 1918, John Joynt, a wealthy Huron County farmer and entrepreneur, was lying in a Buffalo, New York hospital recovering from the Spanish influenza when he awoke to bells ringing and horns blowing.  He knew that the noise heralded news that the War To End All Wars had arrived.

..

Joynt was born in Mayo County, Ireland in November 1854. He was the oldest of eight children born to John and Ellen Joynt, Irish Protestants who immigrated to Canada about 1865.

After initially settling in Durham County, the Joynt family removed to West Wawanosh where they were well established by the 1881 census.

John Jr. married Annie Amelia Fulford of Teeswater in September 1882 and together they had four daughters. Joynt went into farming but as a bright and ambitious young man he branched out into potash production, apple growing and operated apple evaporator plants in Lucknow, Teeswater and Walkerton.

With a lucrative trade in exporting hardwoods and fruit, Joynt had risen from his impoverished background to become a truly self-made man.

By 1919 when Joynt was elected to the provincial legislature as the Conservative member in North Huron, he owned 1,400 acres of land and was one of the most prosperous men in the county.

Too old to serve in the war and having only daughters, Joynt wanted “to do something for the boys of Huron,” according to the Goderich Star.

At his own expense, he spent the then-considerable sum of $5,000 on a monument to honour those from West Wawanosh who had served in the Great War. 

The Joynt War Memorial was the only cenotaph in Huron County paid for entirely by a private individual.

He chose the St. Helens crossroads to erect a monument because whenever he returned to St. Helens “he always thought of his mother and her inspiration and he considered this [St. Helens] the most suitable place for the erection of a monument in appreciation of the deeds of others,” the Star reported.

Indeed, in 1922, Joynt had donated the site and moved the St. Helens community centre to the northeast corner of the crossroads where he intended to place the war memorial.

On May 24, 1923, Victoria Day, “all roads led to St, Helens,” according to the Wingham Advance. Between 3,000 and 4,000 people gathered for the unveiling ceremony of Joynt’s memorial. It was the largest gathering ever held before or since at St. Helens. The impressive ceremony began with a platoon of Great War veterans marching to the flag-draped monument halting and firing three volleys into the air followed by a bugler sounding the “Last Post” before a crowd of thousands who doffed their caps.

Lieut-Colonel H B Combe, former commander of the 161st Huron Battalion, drew the Union Jack off of the black granite monument revealing the names of the West Wawanosh men who had served in the Great War.

Seven “little girls in white” placed floral bouquets on the monument. Each bouquet represented the name of a West Wawanosh soldier who fell in battle. For those in attendance who knew fallen, the cenotaph’s unveiling ceremony was a proxy funeral for those who lie buried in a foreign grave.

Some idea of the tremendous impact that the Great War had on remote and rural areas like West Wawanosh is that 87 names of local men are engraved on the monument of those who wore their country’s uniform.

Local historian Rhea Hamilton Seeger notes that further research has turned up even more West Wawanosh names not listed on the monument.

Immediately after Joynt formally handed the monument over to West Wawanosh, Reeve B S Naylor, Lieut-Colonel Dougall Carmichael, a highly-decorated war hero, lauded the valour of Canadians in the Great War calling them “the finest body of fighting men who ever lived.”

Carmichael remarked that the “monuments scattered throughout the country help us bear in mind all the sacrifices, all the sorrows” and, further, hoped “we would never fail to appreciate what these great men did.”

After the speeches, appropriate music was provided by the Lucknow Pipe Band, Lucknow Boy Scouts Band and the Wingham Brass Band. The program closed with over 3,000 voices singing “God Save the King.”

The Women’s Institute who had done so much in supporting the local war effort accomplished the near impossible by providing sandwiches and lemonade for the multitudes.

The Advance disclosed that 600 loaves of bread were purchased for the occasion and that “every person was fed.”

Undoubtedly, the Joynt Memorial’s unveiling was the profoundly solemn spectacle in West Wawanosh’s history.

Yet, there were those who criticized the Joynt Memorial as a cynical political ploy to help buy votes. The Wingham Advance defended Joynt by observing that “judging by the crowd of people present at the unveiling we think the people who appreciate Mr Joynt’s philanthropy are very much in the majority.” 

Six more names were added after the Second World War.

After the demolition of the St. Helens United Church in 1978, a bell with the names of men who had fought and died in the Great War was placed beside the monument notes the township history book Reflections of West Wowanosh (1995).

After serving two terms in the provincial legislature, John Joynt declined to run for re-election in 1926. He died in December 1937.

He was eulogized as one who had “achieved high standing in his community and his integrity, not less than his business acumen.”

The West Wawanosh Soldiers’ Monument, also known as the Joynt Memorial, eternally bears witness to the courage of a small community at the St. Helens crossroads."

 

 

 

Marker text:

Cenotaph Front:

JOYNT MEMORIAL

THIS MONUMENT IS ERECTED 

IN LOVING MEMORY OF

THE GALLANT HEROES FROM

WAWANOSH TOWNSHIP WHO

OFFERED THEIR LIVES FOR THE

DOMINION OF CANADA AND THE 

BRITISH EMPIRE IN THE GREAT WAR

OVERSEAS

*AGAR GEORGE

AGAR STANLEY

ADAMS THOMAS

ALISTON REV. W.C.

ARMSTRONG THOMAS

AGAR IRWIN

*BAKER JAMES

BUCHANAN ROBERT

BERRY JOHN

CASE BENSON

CASE HOWARD

CRANSTON EARL

*COOK SAMUEL

CAMERON CALLUM

CRAIG ERNEST

DURNIN WILLIAM

DONOVAN JOHN

*ERRINGTON FRED

*FINELON JAMES

GLENN FRANK O.

1914 - 1918

 

 

Right side:

OVERSEAS

FORAN ELMER

GWYN DAVID

HIBBENS GEORGE

HEADLEY NICHOLAS

HUNKINS A.

HALLAM GEORGE

HUTCHINSON JOHN

HUBBS BERT

IVERS W.A.

JEFFERSON JOHN

JONES SAMUEL

JEFFERSON GORDON

*KENNEDY JOHN

KENNEDY DUNCAN

KING RUSSELL

LAIDLAW ROBERT

*LAWSON HERBERT

LAWSON OLIVER

*LAVIS ARTHUR

LAVIS JAMES

LAIDLAW HERBERT

MEDD ROY

MOORE ROBERT

MURRAY ROSS

MILLS CHARLES

McDONALD CLARENCE

McDONALD WILMER

 

 

 

 

Left side:

OVERSEAS

McGUIRE ROBERT

NEWMAN ARTHUR

NEVINS CHARLES

NEIL ERNEST

ORSER FRANK

ORCHARD CECIL

PATTERSON JAMES

PATTERSON ARCHIE

PENTLAND HAROLD G.

PLOWMAN THOMAS

RUTLEDGE GORDON

RIVERS BERT

ROBERTSON ROBERTS

ROLLINSON ALFRED

SPROUL HAROLD L.

STALKER ROY

STALKER JOHN

STUART JOSEPH

SYMINGTON CLARENCE H.

SMYLE WILLIAM

TAYLOR JOHN

THOMPSON JOSEPH

THOMPSON ERNEST

WILSON WILLIAM H.

WILSON EARL

WILSON ROBERT

 

Back:

IN TRAINING IN CANADA

PHILLIPS ROBERT

JEFFERSON CHARLES

THOMPSON JOHN R.

JOHNSTON VICTOR

SMYTH WILLIAM J.

MONK WESLEY

ANDERSON JARVIS

ANDERSON LINFIELD

DURNIN JOHN

WEBSTER ELLWELL

NEWMAN FRED

WELLWOOD JOHN

SOMERVILLE ROBERT

IN GRATEFUL TRIBUTE

2ND WORLD WAR

1939 - 1945

BOWERS WILLIAM

HOUSTON JAMES

IRWIN HAROLD

MAGOFFIN IVAN

McQUILLAN GEORGE

MONTGOMERY ROBERT

 

 

 

 

Bell Front:

MENEELY & CO., WATERVLIET, N.Y. 1919

 

IN LOVING MEMORY OF THOSE WHO FOUGHT

AND THOSE WHO DIED FOR FREEDOM

1914   1918

EARL CRANSTON      SAM JONES

ARTHUR LAVIS           JOHN BERRY

M.C. CAMERON          JOHN TAYLOR

ROBT. McQUIRE          J.R. STUART

R. ROSS MURRAY       JAS. D. BAKER

R.D. BUCHANAN         JAMES LAVIS

R.H. ROBINSON           ROBT. J. WOODS

 

Back:

TO JAMES AITCHESON , SR.

IN APPRECIATION OF HIS

EFFORTS AND ZEAL, THIS

BELL WAS ERECTED 1919.