Doc sets up office at Sovereign hotel

With prayers for the residents displaced from the warmth and dignity of their homes, the business lost and owners of the historic building due to the recent tragedy of fire, I write about a small segment of time connecting life-changing events in the village.

by John R.

Graham

Dr. J.R.H. Graham, and his wife, Marjorie Winnifred Graham, arrived in Creemore on October 30, 1926. My brother, Robert, was born in 1927. I am John Graham, born in 1934. I am the last family connection with Creemore. Since my retirement in 2019, I have been living with my family in Huntington Beach, California. I have a heart filled with gratitude for my life.

Rolly Graham and Marjorie Graham purchased the Sovereign Hotel building at Mill and Caroline Streets in 1944. They drew up plans for a medical office and four apartments on the two upper floors. The initial project was the medical space for two doctors, including a large treatment room with one hospital bed and emergency equipment, a large dispensary with three walls of medicines (liquid, pill, and ointments), a bathroom, and an extra workspace to double as a lunchroom.

The Creemore Star, dated Feb. 15, 1945, reported, “Dr. Graham now located in front rooms of the former Sovereign Hotel.”

Entering from Mill Street, there was a small rectangular room for shaking off snow and mud, then pushing through a second door that buffered the weather, a space with four doors for the four directions. On the right was a half door by the front desk receptionist in the dispensary; straight ahead, a door to the private office spaces; and on the left, a framed opening into a large waiting room. Matching wooden armchairs against four walls, under pleasing paintings, with a table in the middle, gave 24 people space to discuss the weather, springtime ruts in Nottawasaga Township, current events, and family. “And will your daughter Evelyn be coming home for the holiday?” Gossip seemed out of place in the quiet haven of the Doctor’s Waiting Room because it was sacred ground for the distressed.

Russell F. Boettger, MD, a young medical doctor who returned from medical service with the Royal Canadian Army Corps, joined my father in medical practice in February 1946 and established his family in Creemore. It was an understandable loss but a sadness to the village when the family moved back to their home community of Waterloo, close to their grandparents, in the summer of 1951.

The most interesting person arriving at the old Sovereign Hotel was a former Colonel in the White Russian Army, a Georgian from Tbilisi. Marjorie and Rolly Graham, in 1944, hired Mr. Kirill Paholkin. With his wife, Claire, a nurse and former officer in the White Russian Army, the couple escaped the Red Army takeover of Russia in 1917. However, their beloved home country of Georgia was to become the Soviet Socialist Republic of Georgia. So Kirill and Claire walked out of their native Georgia to Armenia and Turkey. Years later, after many midway points, including Toronto, they settled on a small farm near Randwick. Kirill walked to Creemore Sunday evening

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PUBLISHER Sara Hershoff sara@creemore.com

EDITOR

Trina Berlo trina@creemore.com

Bonnie MacPherson bonnie@creemore.com