Arnold Mathers From Ireland to Queen's Bush
b'Arnold Mathers Arnold spent his early years on a farm in the north part of Huron County. He graduated from Wingham High School, Stratford Teachers\\u2019 College, the University of Western Ontario, with a B.A., and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, with a M.Ed. Arnold began teaching in a rural school with twenty-four pupils in eight grades. He taught in Toronto for five years, and then for eighteen years he was the Principal of Huron Centennial Elementary School at Brucefield, Ontario. He spent the last ten years of his educational career as Superintendent for the Huron County Board of Education. Arnold never got very far away from his farming roots. Along with a farming partner, and his wife and children, they farmed 300 acres. They raised beef cattle, cash cropped and grew and sold Christmas trees. Arnold began writing stories during his retirement and has published three family genealogies and a book of humorous short stories. Thirty-seven of his stories have been published in the Rural Voice, a magazine that is widely read by Ontario farm families. Arnold and his wife, Ila, live in Exeter and divide their time between Exeter, Florida and their 160 year old log house on their tree farm near Wingham. Arnold looked to his Irish roots for inspiration to write From Ireland to the Queen\\u2019s Bush, a collection of 10 short stories about families leaving Ireland and coming to Canada. Mathers said, \\u201cThey\\u2019re stories about undertakers and musicians, different folks coming from Ireland.\\u201d Irish immigrants in the stories find their way to Derrymore, Ont., a fictional village inspired by where Mathers grew up in Belmore, which sits in what was once known as the Queen\\u2019s Bush, an area between Waterloo County and Lake Huron. Though the stories are fictional, Mathers based them off research from six trips to Ireland as well as personal experience.'