On the morning of last month’s big celebration and fundraiser that her friends and family had planned in her honor, Jean Sicard Kelleher suddenly found herself overcome with emotion and harboring serious doubts as to whether she was actually going to make it through the entire event. Kelleher, a veteran schoolteacher who was used to […]
Through the trees and across the Canton Corner Cemetery, the bell peals each Sunday. The sweet sound calls parishioners to the services at the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church — the quintessential white steeple church alongside the burying ground where generations of Canton’s citizens have been laid to rest. And from this steeple, history sounds […]
For the past five and a half years, Denny Swenson has lived, quite literally, with one foot in Canton and the other just beyond its reaches. As it turns out, the town’s border with Milton cuts right through her house diagonally, meaning that she and her husband, Win, are residents and taxpayers of both communities. […]
Carlo Zanazzo lives in North Pole, Alaska. Yes, the North Pole. Not only that, but he’s a subscriber to the Canton Citizen — and has been for quite some time now. He is a man who lives almost 3,300 miles away and yet remains deeply interested in and devoted to the community in which he […]
You can live in a place your whole life and still find surprise in your own backyard. Over the past year I have been exploring the Blue Hills Reservation. Trekking from Quincy to Canton and sometimes back again, the 7,000 acres of woodland and marsh is majestic and exhilarating. Some of the greatest views in […]
John Jennison and Ellen Marie Crowley met on a blind date in 1950, although Ellen had heard of him because he had played football for Canton High School. “I knew what he looked like,” said Ellen, her eyes twinkling with the memory. John didn’t miss a beat to finish the thought: “And that didn’t scare […]
As you stand at the kitchen sink and turn on the water, reflect upon how that water makes its way through a complex system of pipes from deep wells and through a well-established network, ending at the glass of water in your hands. The person most responsible for our modern system of wells and clean […]
The Franklin Park Zoo, a 72-acre treasure located in the heart of Boston, will celebrate its 100th anniversary this year, and no one could be more proud of this milestone than John Linehan, the zoo’s president and CEO since 2001 and a man whose own career at the zoo goes back more than three decades. “I […]
In the corner of my kitchen is a tube of reproduced historic maps of Canton. I use these maps regularly to help me write these stories. The best is dated 1855, a copy of an original that hangs framed in a back corner of the Historical Society. The map is actually a picture, a sketch, […]
We trace the arc of the seasons across the years, and the old adage quickly points out that the more things change, the more they remain the same. Looking back at Canton exactly 100 years ago, the year 1911, the observer is struck with the normalcy of life and the fact that things really don’t […]
