First published in the first yearbook of West Hill Secondary School, 1961

(The following account is the gist of a conversation that the Principal had with Mr. Hulse Moore, a native of Owen Sound, eighty years of age, a man with memories of his boyhood on the West Hill.)

In imagination, I ascend the West Rock and sit quietly, reminiscing. Below, there stretches a tract of land on which a modern secondary school now rests.

Scenes from the past take shape . . . cows grazing in the pasture. . .a fence along the old West Gravel Road (now Tenth Street, West) and along Scott Street (Sixth Avenue, West). . .westward the beginning of The One Hundred Mile Swamp, sometimes called the Long Swamp.

In those days residents kept a cow or two. For $10 dollars they were permitted to put the Cow to pasture on the Simpson field. Holsteins, Jerseys, Durhams - any kind - grazed quietly side-by-side. . . nibbling their way up to the Douglas garden on the west. I remember that Mr. Brown carved away through part of the rock so that the cows might file their way through to the natural spring water bursting from the south rock.

In those days we boys living near Moore's Hill would run across the pasture field, dodging thistles,, on our way to the 'old swimming hole' at the Wright's Oat-meal Mill on the Pottawatami. The oat-meal had a strong and nutty flavor that appealed to the taste as no oatmeal seems to appeal now.

The land in those days was usually sold in park lots of 44 acres. The Simpson park lot was the area now occupied by the West Hill Secondary School.

No longer do the animals of the Long Swamp hover around the berry patches of the West Hill. Once in my boyhood I came upon a cinnamon bear relaxing in an open spot. I left quickly, but the old fellow simply yawned wonderingly. Once, too, a seven foot four inch puff adder turned up at the spring's edge. It was killed, identified, and stuffed. Sometimes wildcats came in close. On one occasion we followed the screeching of one of these until we came under the tree in which it rested. Though we had guns and clubs, we went rapidly our several ways when it gave allowed screech from its perch on a branch. Another day a man riding on a load of wood stopped us as we passed by in our cutter, and he showed us a lynx he had killed. When we put it over the cutter its feet touch the snow on either side. Though occasionally someone was attacked by a wild animal, I cannot remember any serious or fatal injury.

Other memories crowd in. I remember, for example, that 50 years ago a huge bon-fire was built on the rock point overlooking the city. Then there was the night that a huge fiery cross was seen burning. Some said it was done by the Ku Klux Klan. This was never proved.

It seems difficult to realize now that once a thousand men worked on the rock cliffs. Lime kilns were active.The Browns built a pot kiln near the school cliff-side. This type was a huge pot-shaped kiln with iron bars across the top so that a wood fire could be built below. The present kiln -a land-mark immediately to the south of the school - was built by the Browns but seldom used. The one at the end of Eighth Street, West was more frequently operated. The kiln process was a means of getting out of the impurities so that the white lime would remain. There was always an argument about whether the blue lime of Kingston was as good as the white lime of Owen Sound. Unfortunately, the lime kiln operators were driven out of business by the large syndicates that secured a monopoly.

And so today as I gaze at the West Hill Secondary School - modern in design and colour - the green campus surrounding it - the unfinished playing field on the east -it is hard to realize that the pasture land, the lime kiln, the Oat-Meal Mill, and the desolate Long Swamp have given place to a new era.