Terry Wilson is no stranger to making history come alive. As a history teacher, he used to make stories come alive for his students; now he continues to enthrall visitors with the re-creation of his historic hometown village of Meadowvale near Toronto, Canada.
In an interview with The Epoch Times, Terry, 72, described the village: “I was growing up in a very historic setting because we had all of these historic buildings left over from the 1840s and 1850s that were still standing. So for many people, for many kids, it would have been like watching a program on television about a time, an era of history, but I had it right here on my street where I lived.”
He fondly remembers a hitching post outside the one-room schoolhouse and how he used to see the town blacksmith at work on his walk home from school.
Growing up in such a wonderful place, Terry is especially thankful for the tender care and influence of his mother. Her beauty stood out in their small village, giving Terry a deep sense of pride—especially during his youth, when he often felt like an outcast among his peers due to his thick glasses and short stature.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “as a kid, one time, I was watching television in the living room, and I got so excited. I called out, ‘Hey, everybody, Mom’s on television.’ I was sure it was her. It was Bess Myerson, Miss America, who was on television at that moment.”
But what truly made his mother, Rosemary, stand out was her generosity.
He said: “I admired her character just enormously, always did. I knew what a good person she was. Her kitchen was open to everyone. If anybody in the village was having a rough time or a bad day or feeling sorrowful, they knew they could go up to Rosemary’s kitchen in the little house, and she‘d make them a cup of coffee, and she’d give them a shoulder to cry on, and she'd have some of that baking for them, too.”
The Garden That Started It All
As time went on, everything around Meadowvale Village started to change. All the villages and farms that Terry had known for decades, began to disappear rapidly, cleared away for urban development.One day in 1998 after torrential rain, their garden was flooded due to the trenching in a nearby development. When the pair approached the developers to solve the problem, they learned that the developers had been using Rosemary’s beautiful garden as a selling point.
It turned out that the developer was encouraging potential buyers to go for a walk through the neighborhood, knowing that the sight of Rosemary’s garden would convince them to buy.
“He said, ‘You’re selling our houses for us. We don’t want anything to happen to your garden,’” Terry recalled.
The developer offered to pay for the damage and held Terry and Rosemary in high esteem. When the two noticed the construction workers discarding large amounts of good wood that didn’t meet the developer’s standards, they asked if they could take some home. The developer readily agreed, telling them they could have as much as they wanted.
That’s how they came up with the idea of using that lumber to preserve their village, which was rapidly disappearing, by building small replicas of the historic buildings in their own backyard.
So one building after another, the little village took shape. It now consists of 24 buildings, including a church, two mills, and a general store. Terry built the structures and his mother collected items from yard sales, auctions, or donations to decorate the interiors, always making sure the objects were authentic to the 19th century.
It took them over two decades to complete the small village preserving and celebrating the heritage of Meadowvale. Sadly, Terry’s mother was unable to see their work through to the end. She passed away in 2015 after a long battle with cancer, leaving her son to carry on their vision.
The process required Terry to learn a great deal, as he’d never taken much interest in construction before.
“I like to play hockey,” he said. “I had no interest in anything with woodworking or any kind of building skills. I had zero interest in that.”
His desire to help his mother fulfill her vision, combined with his love of history and a yearning to create something beautiful, motivated him to learn the craft of woodworking.
Sharing the Comfort of Home
As he reflects on his recreated village, Terry notes that its mission and purpose have changed. In the beginning, it was a personal place of solace for his family and a reminder of the old ways in the face of the expanding urbanization.Soon local visitors started showing up. “They were enchanted, and they found it a great comfort to come and walk through. They didn’t want to leave,” Terry said. “So that’s when we realized that what we had done to preserve our village’s history ... it turned out it comforted us, it comforted a lot of people.”
Terry says both his tiny village and the stories he tells in his books hold a special appeal for people.
“It made them feel that the world is still a sane place, that there’s still a place where it’s peaceful and quiet, and the simple joys of life are observed and maintained, preserved.”
