In the early 1920’s, a memorial stained glass window was erected by Robert McCausland Company in the local highschool to honour Tweed, Ontario’s fallen soldiers from World War I amid dignitaries Brigadier General A. E. Ross and the Reverend Dr. Bruce Taylor, Principal of Queen’s University. The three panel stained glass window depicts a soldier armed with bayonet at its centre and bookended either side with the names of the dead from the Tweed area. The window was erected in honour of those who had paid the ultimate sacrifice during the Great War. A local restoration team from Sunrise Glass Works performed repair work in the early 1970’s when the school board was in the midst of tearing down the original part of the high school, erected near the end of World War I. The window migrated to a safe spot in a newer addition to the school.
To fund the memorial, tag sales and bake sales were held at the school, with local businesses pitching in to help where they could. An ad published in a 1921 edition of the Tweed News promised a sack of Reindeer flour and a piece of furniture “of equal value” to the top winners of a baking competition, as well as $5.00 vouchers towards the purchase of an impressive Barnet kitchen cabinet to all who entered. A series of lectures by Queen’s professors at the Presbyterian Church promised to educate and make money for the window project at the same time. Attend a single session for a quarter or all seven for a single dollar.
Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board’s opened a brand new educational facility in 2012 adjacent to the site of Tweed’s old school. The Veterans Memorial window was moved from from the old school to the new school, where the playground once stood. The stained glass window, approximately eight feet by eight feet, now resides in its third home to date: high above a bookshelf in the new Tweed Elementary School’s Learning Commons within the library.
