Ontario’s Downton Abbey: The Life and Times of an Eaton’s Chauffeur

Trips across Europe.  Expensive cars.  Royal company. You might think these luxuries were exclusive to Ontario’s early-twentieth-century upper class.  Our new Reading Room exhibit, exploring the life and times of Herbert Coleman McEachern, chauffeur to Lady Flora McCrea Eaton, shows a different story.

Until now, records in the John Craig Eaton and Flora McCrea Eaton fonds (F 228) told the tale of this prominent Ontario family from the perspective of the social elite.  However, a recent addition to the collection, consisting of textual records and photographs created or accumulated by Herbert McEachern, provides a unique glimpse into class relations and the Eatons’ social scene, as experienced by a T. Eaton Company employee during the height of the firm’s success.

Highlights include a document signed by Lady Eaton, authorizing McEachern to dispose of her Lancia Dilambda automobile, and a photograph depicting McEachern chauffeuring Prince Edward, Prince of Wales, during the Prince's trip to Toronto, Ontario in August 1919.

See this exhibit in full by visiting the Archives of Ontario’s Reading Room!  On now until July 2015.