A wise person once said you cannot know where you’re going without knowing where you came from. Few have been able to express so warmly their appreciation of family and community roots than has Clare Galvin.
Clare’s great, great grandfather was an immigrant of Peter Robinson, who settled in Ennismore Township in 1825. Mr. Galvin built a family home on land settled by his grandfather, and for more than 40 years, Clare was a successful men’s clothier in Peterborough.
However his true passion was sharing history in a gentle, yet compelling fashion. In 1978, drawing on his Irish heritage, he authored ‘The Holy Land – A History of Ennismore Township.’ He also wrote two other books sharing warmhearted memories of a lifetime lived in the Peterborough area: ‘My Town, My Memories,’ and ‘The Days of My Years.’ Along the way, he displayed his wit and humour through the pages of The Peterborough Examiner by way of his ‘Clare Remembers’ columns.
For Clare Galvin, history, place and family roots were a living trust, and he abided by that trust with perception, gentle grace and good humour.