​The Barrie Family Hospice of Elgin officially opened the doors to its residential hospice, lovingly known as The Cottage, a year ago, right here in St. Thomas. One year of no-cost, compassionate, 24/7 end-of-life care for local Elgin County and St. Thomas families. One year of life-changing interactions, powerful connections, and final memories which will be felt for generations. One year of community impact that is hard to summarize but means more than any words could ever explain.

On the night of September 15, 1885, a freight train rounded a curve just outside St. Thomas, Ontario, and changed history in ways nobody standing on those tracks could have imagined. The elephant that died there that night was already world-famous. What nobody knew yet was that his name was about to outlive him by centuries.
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You already know Jumbo’s story. If you want the full account of his life, his years at the London Zoo, his arrival in Barnum’s circus, and the strange and disputed circumstances of his death right here in Railway City, Railway City Tourism has you covered. What we want to talk about is what happened next. Not just in St. Thomas. Not just in North America. Everywhere.

Avi Silver will tell you, pretty cheerfully, that they never want to write a trilogy again.

Then they'll tell you how proud they are of this one. Both things are true, and it seems to me that’s likely a pretty common emotion for an author to feel.

Avi, a speculative fiction author and self-described "noted menace," moved to St. Thomas in January 2025 with their partner, fellow author Sienna Tristen. Not long after, they finished One Morning Sun, the final book of the Sãoni Cycle trilogy.

Four years in the making, written through a pandemic, grief, and a whole lot of doubt, the book is out in the world now and has been nominated for the 2026 Aurora Awards. 

The City of St. Thomas has issued a Request for Information (RFI) with an Expression of Interest (EOI) document to invite qualified developers, investors, and community partners to submit proposals for the potential purchase and adaptive reuse of the former Wellington Street Public School property, located at 50 Wellington Street.

Known as the Wellington Block, this City-owned site includes a designated heritage building constructed in 1898 and occupies a prominent corner at Wellington and Elgin Streets. The City is seeking visionary and innovative proposals that respect the site’s heritage character while contributing to economic growth, housing supply, cultural vitality, and long-term community revitalization.

There’s a mural in the front office at Cole Munro Foods that stops you in your tracks. Commissioned as a gift from a long-time supplier, it tells the full life cycle of a trout in rich, sweeping detail from a fingerling hatching in a cold-water stream all the way to harvest. Look closely enough, and you’ll spot easter eggs worked in by the artist: one of the company’s boats, a basketball player, a yin and yang symbol tucked in for the twins, Andrew and Harrison. A company that has built a close enough connection with a supplier that they would commission something that personal, that specific, is telling you something about itself before you’ve even asked a question.

The funny thing about a box is that you barely notice it until you really, really need it. (Unless you are a millennial and have a veritable collection of “good boxes”, and I’d almost bet at least one of them was made right here in St. Thomas.)

You’re in a grocery store, half-thinking about dinner, and you walk past one of those tidy cardboard displays stacked with snacks or pet food. Or you’re opening an online order at your kitchen table, and you can tell, instantly, whether the packaging was an afterthought or part of the experience. The box is doing its job either way. Quietly. Reliably. Almost invisibly.

And then you tour a place like Royal Containers in St. Thomas, and suddenly you can’t unsee it. You start looking for the little stamp on the bottom. You start wondering who designed the die cut. You start noticing the printing. I can’t be alone in this.

Why this story belongs here, and why I keep coming back to it
​St. Thomas has a habit of telling certain stories so often that they start to feel like the whole story. “Railway City” is the obvious one. And don’t get me wrong, I love that piece of our identity. But every so often, it’s worth slowing down and asking: who else built a life here when the odds were stacked so high it’s hard to imagine? [1]
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When our team at St. Thomas Economic Development talks about opportunity, we usually mean it in today’s language: jobs, investment, growth, talent. But there’s an older, more personal definition of opportunity, too. The chance to arrive somewhere and be allowed to stay. To work. To own something. To belong, perhaps gradually, and not without friction. Lloyd Graves’ story sits right in that space, local, documented, and (to me, anyway) quietly astonishing. [2]
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We are seated at an important time to discuss the opportunities that can arise from hard times. Hard times create problems that need solving, and those who step into the gap to fill them are the ones who will be celebrating milestones 10, 15, and 25 years down the road.  DMAC Automation crossed that 15-year milestone in 2024.

I recently caught up with DMAC Owner and President, Dave Minor, to learn more about the company, and there’s a moment in our conversation where he casually explains what “DMAC” means, and it honestly made me laugh a little—because it’s both completely practical and kind of perfect.
 
It’s not a family name. It’s not a trendy “we mashed a few letters together and hoped for the best” situation. It’s literally a sentence that turned into a company name.
 
Design. Manufacture. Assemble. Control. Commission. Automation.

Dave wrote out what the business would do (because the bank wanted to know, as banks do), turned it into an acronym, and—almost accidentally—ended up with the brand. “Commission” was the last piece added, he told me, because it’s a real part of what they do in the field. And now, years later, the name still reads like a simple promise: this is what we do. End of story.
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And the funny part is… that’s pretty much the whole vibe at DMAC Automation.

After opening the doors to the human side of Animal Services in Part One—where compassion, teamwork, and community connection shape every day at the shelter—it’s time to look ahead to the physical future of that work. The current facility has served its purpose well beyond its years, but as the city continues to grow, so too must the space that supports its animals and the people who care for them. In this next chapter, we’ll explore the plans, challenges, and community efforts behind the construction of St. Thomas’s new animal shelter—a long-awaited project built on the same heart and dedication that drive the team inside it.