Editor's preface and instructions for viewing

History of the Reunion Book

The 1956 Stewart family reunion in Dwight, Ontario, brought  together more family members than any other event upt to the time of this writing, and was the last reunion attended by most of the seven children of J.W.A. Stewart and Mary McGinn Stewart.

One of the seven siblings, the Rev. Harold S. Stewart, assembled the reunion around the time of the reunion, and kept it at the Pine Cone, his cottage in Dwight, where the book passed down to his children and grandchildren..

In 1998, family historian Elizabeth Stewart took the book to Rochester, New York, for preservation work: she reattached photographs and clippings which had come loose, and enclosed the embrittled pages in  protective plastic sleeves. She also had photocopies of the book made. She then returned the book to the Pine Cone.

About the digitized version

In August 2000, Harold Stewart's grandson, Bill Stewart, lent the book to me so I could prepare a digitized version. My goal was to preserve the content against deterioration or possible loss, and to make it easy to duplicate so it could be distributed more widely.

I have had to make some editorial decisions to adapt the content to the digital medium. Harold Stewart hand lettered his captions for the photos and clippings of the original book. I have scanned his lettering, rather than to retype it, so as to preserve some of the flavor of the original. Additional comments and identifications display  in a computer typefont and so are clearly distinguished from the original captions.. 

Each page of the digitized version corresponds to a page of the original, but for easier viewing on a computer screen, I have not duplicated the page layout of the original. Instead, I have assembled all the items of each page into a single vertical column. As the original photo prints were of various sizes and quality. I have scanned each one at the size which displays best on an 800 x 600 pixel computer screen.

When a photo print had more detail than the computer screen can reveal, I also have scanned it at a larger size, to preserve this detail for printing or for display on future computer systems. Links to the larger scans are provided. I have also removed blemishes from many photos, sharpened them, righted them and, consequently, lightly cropped many of them or cloned background along an edge to restore an upright, rectangular format.

Most of the color photos were badly faded and discolored. I have restored the colors to the degree allowed by available time and my skills. Further restoration is possible in many cases. Here is an example of color restoration of a photo which appears at a larger size on page 20:

The digitized version of the reunion book includes every item in the original except for three photos: A photo of Gordon, Peggy and Susi Stewart in Frankfurt, Germany on page 30 was missing. I have replaced it with a scan from another print which may or may not be of the same image. Two photos of Dorothy Stewart at the bottom of page 33 were of very poor quality, and I have replaced them with a single, much better photo of her.

Viewing instructions

Viewing the reunion book on the computer screen is straightforward enough, using an Internet browser. Before following the links to larger versions of images, make sure your browser is set to display graphic images in the main window, and not to open them in a new window. Then you will be able to use the browser's "Back" button to return to the page from which you came.

For printing, you will have  to specify the print size. If you can not do this from within your browser, you may have to open an image in a graphics application to print it at the size you desire.