What is the point?

To the Editor:

There have been hints at recent Kincardine council meetings that the municipality will soon be discussing the removal of the Dr. Solomon Secord Memorial in front of the library.

Before council gets embroiled in a senseless controversy, I suggest members read Kincardine bylaw 2015-10, a bylaw that designates the former home of Mr. and Mrs. Secord at 276 Durham Street, as being a place of historic and architectural value.

They should pay particular attention to the following paragraph in Appendix A:

Approximately 40,000 to 50,000 Canadians served in the Civil War; however, only five or six Canadian doctors are known to have served. Despite opposing slavery and being arrested in Georgia for his opinions on the matter, Dr. Secord joined the South as an assistant surgeon. He was promoted to a full surgeon in 1863, equivalent to major with the 20^th Regiment. He was captured in the summer of 1863, while caring for the wounded at Gettysburg, but by October, escaped and rejoined the 20^th Regiment where he worked in the operating theatre until the end of the war. In 1867, following the end of the American Civil War, Dr. Secord returned to Kincardine, living at 276 Durham Street until his death.

Dr. Secord, as numerous stories attest, was not a racist. He was a much-loved doctor who served the people of the Kincardine area well – so well, that citizens of this community collected donations and erected a Sundial Memorial to Dr. Secord in front of the library.

His name does not need to be dragged through the mud.

Eric Howald
Kincardine