Photo of the log home built in Tollendal, lot 13 concession 14 formerly of Innisfil. The lot was originally owned by Captain Edward O'Brien, who sold it in 1834 to Richard Colston Gapper, who in turn sold the land the same year to Edmund S. Lally. Edmund gave Tollendal its name for his family's home in Ireland in Tulla-na-Dall, County Galway. Edmund later moved to Barrie and sold 41 acres in the northwest corner of the lot to his son-in-law, D'Alton McCarthy, a Barrie lawyer, in 1896. D'Alton made several improvements to the log home before his death in 1898. Soap manufacturer John Pugsley and his wife Lucy Emma (née Harrison) purchased the property from D'Alton's widow in 1907, and made further renovations to the home, which then had a large living room and a dozen bedrooms. John and Lucy's daughter Ethel "May" married surgeon Samuel Henry Westman and had two children: James Ross and John Lister, known as "Jack". After Samuel's death in 1911, May married Albert Cohoe in Halifax in 1915, and the family moved to New England but spent their summers in the log home in Tollendal. A fire on 1 November 1928 destroyed the home and the occupants only narrowly escaped when May, who was up reading a book to combat insomnia, heard the crackling sound and managed to help everyone escape via a second storey window onto the roof of the veranda. This photo was given to Bill Warnica by the daughters of Jack Westman: Beverly, Janet, and Valerie.
