Both my father Gordon Conning and our grandfather John Stuart Conning wrote about their interesting lives in autobiographical form. My good friend Rachel Hepburn, who grew up north of Wiarton and lives near Purple Valley has generously transcribed the manuscripts as Word documents. We are indebted to her for making these available in digital form so they can be easily downloaded.

Grandfather Conning's manuscript ended before he got to Red Bay. But since he, along with Dr. Harry Arnott, and the other summer pioneers were the founders of our little colony, it is appropriate to be able to find out about the man himself and how he came to spend his summers at Red Bay. He starts with some very interesting history about the area of Galloway in Scotland where he grew up, the Druids, smugglers, ghosts and fairies that were abundant at that time. His father took the family to London, Ontario when he was twelve. He financed his own education and eventually became a Presbyterian minister and an official in the board of missions, which among other things helped convert many millions of Koreans to Christianity.

My father had much more to say about Red Bay. He was a good writer and described well the journey north from their home in Baltimore, to the Alison home in Toronto, and finally the wagon trip from Wiarton to the Point. You Red Bay lovers will enjoy this account. Both documents can be downloaded by clicking the buttons to the left. These are Microsoft Word documents. I plan to convert these to PDF form, which should be easier to read through and search, especially for people without Word.

This website is not intended to be the story of the Conning family. I only began it here while waiting for others to discover these pages and contribute stories of their own. So if you have photos and stories, home movies and interesting memories that you would like to contribute please send me an email and let me share them with the people who love Red Bay, the Bruce, the Georgian Bay and Lake Huron. Click here to send us an email