Mary Wood Collection

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Mary Wood Collection: Image Highlights of Early Vaughan

The Mary Wood Collection is one of the City’s premier collections and provides a large amount of visual evidence of life in Vaughan from 1837 to 1983.

Born Mary Isabel Hollingshead in 1908, Mary Wood was best known as “Woodbridge’s Unofficial Historian,” an appellation she well deserved. A life-long Vaughan resident, Mary Wood was an extraordinarily civic and community-minded individual, and she dedicated herself to preserving her community’s past. In fact, Mrs. Wood’s contributions to her community were so significant that in 1986 she received the provincial award of Senior Citizen of the Year from Lieutenant-Governor Lincoln Alexander.

Many of the images were taken by Mary Wood herself, while others are materials from family albums and other sources. The photographs and slides in this collection document changes to the landscape and the community over time.

This exhibit highlights some of the items in the collection and provides a glimpse into the daily life in rural Vaughan Township. Selected images are taken from family photo albums capturing the Woodbridge area from the mid-1800s through to the 1960s. There are two contrasting themes:

Rural life on a family dairy farm
Urban scenes from early Woodbridge businesses, services and industries

Mary Wood (born Mary Isabel Hollingshead, 14 September 1908) was a longtime Woodbridge resident and was known as “Woodbridge’s Unofficial Historian”, an appropriate title for an individual who cultivated a life-long fascination with the history of the area and who dedicated much of her efforts to preserving her community’s past. A life-long Vaughan/Woodbridge resident, she attended Weston Collegiate, graduating in 1923. She married James Alvin Wood in 1931 and worked from this point to March 1944 on the family dairy farm located on Lot 2, Concession 8. At a later date, various circumstances conspired to force the Woods to liquidate their farm’s assets; they then moved to Woodbridge proper.