Holmes

(from Arkona Through the Years)

William Robert Holmes was born in Arkona in 1881. He was the youngest of ten born to George and Lucy Holmes of Lincolnshire, England. He finished public school at the age of twelve, and in due course, graduated from the Watford High School.

In his youth, Will exhibited unusual ability in art and music. Without any formal training, he produced oils and pastels which found ready sale wherever his art was exhibited. His pictures hang on many walls in Ontario, Michigan and the Canadian West.

Will built a wide knowledge of musical composers and their work, singers and their operatic roles, and violinists and pianists. His accurate and retentive memory for tone quality and musical selection made him an authority in this field although he had very little formal musical training.

In 1900 Will Holmes was granted a Third Class Certificate and for the following three years taught elementary school in Brooke Township. He gave up his pedagogical role and opened a photography studio above Crawford’s Hardware, Arkona. When fire destroyed this building in 1913, Will returned to the farm on Lot 22, Con. 5 NER to help his aging father. Five years later when his father died, he took charge of the farm where his two unmarried sisters, Charlotte and Elizabeth, kept house for him.

After selling the farm to Helen and John Roder, the three Holmes retired to Arkona, where Will cultivated beautiful informal gardens. Here, he and his friends would while away the afternoons looking at his paintings and listening to music.

Friends recall Will’s unusually keen sense of the beautiful and his avowed love of people. Scarcely a summer day passed that he did not take a flower, fruit or one of his pictures to lift the hearts of the sick or lonely. The painting here is attributed to Bill Holmes.

Bill Holmes’ painting of Rock Glen. courtesy R Vaughan

Chapter 24 of 25 - Holmes Family

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