Foresters Hall Becomes the Kinmount Community Centre and Artisan’s Marketplace

The Canadian Order of Foresters was a fraternal, mutual aid society that was derived from an ancient English friendly society devoted to caring for the sick. In Canada, the organization came to offer insurance long before the introduction of Medicare. Local clubs (called a ‘court’) were headed by a Ranger, Deputy-Ranger and Physician. Kinmount residents organized COF Court #677 in the 1890s, recruiting 78 members within a year.

Socializing was very important to the Foresters, as they began to organize gatherings and public performances, such as a Grand Concert at the Orange Hall in 1900. In 1902, they bought a vacant lot beside the Northern Hotel, just west of the main street and railway. It opened in March 1903, with a night of performances, which included the Kinmount Brass Band, pianists Misses Hopkins and Graham, and Toronto comic entertainer W.J. White. Over the years, it would host many more public events as it became a community centre: political meetings, church suppers and public performances. Author, poet and elocutionist Pauline Johnson would grace its stage. During the First World War, it served as the barracks for Kinmount’s platoon in the Victoria Regiment.

The original Foresters Hall burned in 1922, but was soon rebuilt on the same footprint. In the 1930s, as the community was struggling through the Great Depression, the Hall was no longer able to cover its costs. Howard Hopkins purchased the building and used it for storage and a workshop. In 1950, the Township of Somerville acquired it and reopened it as a community hall.  Over the years it would serve as a movie theatre (before Kieth Stata’s Highlands Cinemas became the community’s major attraction), and host meetings, fur buyers’ events, election polls, dances, New Year’s Eve celebrations, suppers, bazaars, concerts, flower shows, a factory for Uncle Stan’s Fertilizers, a sign store, and physical education for the local school. In 1962, the township added a firehall (which was little more than a parking shelter for a truck), which continued in use until the new firehall was built beside the cemetery in 1979. It would be home to the public library until 1999, when it moved to the basement of the new Township of Somerville building on the south edge of town.

In the 1980s, an artisan’s guild formed and moved into the basement of the Foresters Hall, which has expanded several times over the years. Today, the Kinmount Artisans Marketplace is home to approximately forty active exhibitors. EarlyOn (Ontario Early Years Centre) offers preschool education, and the upper floor continues to host community events. Much as things have changed since 1903, the former Foresters Hall continues to be a centre of cultural activity for Kinmount.