Our guest speaker, Cathy Summers, from the St. Catharines Heritage Society, who gave a talk entitled, “Home From the War”. Now, we had expected a talk on wartime housing, but what we got was much more. As she reviewed this project put together to mark the 65th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, Cathy took us on a journey down memory lane, to a time of growth and optimism, when our city was growing by leaps and bounds as workers flooded into the city to fill jobs in booming factories. First the houses we know as “war time houses” were built to house the workers, and then after hostili-ties ceased they were built to house veterans returning home.

We traveled through many of our city’s neighbourhoods as Cathy retold stories sent in by people from across the country. It was a captivating tale that kept us all spellbound. How little we knew about those parts of our city’s past!

Next month’s speaker will be Mariek Schmidt. Her presentation is titled “Curiosity in Gale Crater, Mars”. This talk will tell the story of environments on Mars over time. Ms Schmidt is a participating scientist with NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover Mission.