For those interested in the history of local communities, two Burford historical walking tours are being held on Saturday, May 9, 2026.
Put on by local historian Clayton Barker, the first tour is set to take place from 10 a.m. to noon.
Those in attendance will get to learn about Burford during its first three decades, including the days of its founding in 1793 and its involvement in the War of 1812.
“I always start spring off with the original Burford historical sites,” said Barker. “I’ll take everyone down to the far western extremity where the village actually began, which is a mile and a half or so out from where the village migrated up to over the years, and we’ll come to where it’s resting right now, at what I call the four corners. The tour will take into consideration the locations where specific events and people were during the War of 1812 and of course, the founding of Burford in 1793.”
After the tour ends, Barker will be sticking around for picnic lunch and show and tell from noon to 2 p.m.
“It’s almost like a meet and greet, and show and tell all at the same time. I used to kind of bide my time and look at my notes in between these two tours, and I figured that was wasted time when there are people who are eager to see and talk about artifacts, some who may even have their own artifacts and things to talk about,” he said. “I belong to a group called Burford Connects and we’re working with the County to have the green space at the corner of Maple Avenue and King Street transformed into an actual centerpiece and parkette. That’s where we’ll meet for the walk anyway, and so I figured people can come, have lunch and talk about whatever object they bring, as well as some of the artifacts and parts of buildings I’ll be bringing.”
The second tour of the day will take place from 2 to 4 p.m. and will focus on the various hotels that were located in the village between 1794 and 1930. While Burford once boasted several popular hotel establishments, only one of those buildings has survived two centuries of time. Those in attendance will get to see the locations of the former hotels and hear of how they had thrived.
“The second tour is going to be a very, very different tour for me, because I’ve been getting a lot of people asking me and talking about where these old hotel locations were,” said Barker. “There’s volumes and volumes of stuff that I’ve researched to do with all these hotels because there’s a lot of previously published information that is confusing to the actual histories of these places. So I’ve spent a lot of time and effort to nail the facts down so that I can actually take people to seven or eight locations, and that’s just in the village. They weren’t all operating at the exact same time, at the very most there may have been four existing around the same time.”
Photo courtesy Burford – All Those Years Ago Facebook page.
Barker said his love of history first began when he was around the age of six and his great-grandmother would share stories with him.
“My great grandmother was living in a three-room shanty made of wooden shingles several 100 feet off the road and that’s where I grew up for the first ten years of my life – on Concession Road in Burford Township,” he said. “Whenever I had the chance to go there and play, she would want to tell me all her stories of the old days, and so that’s what inspired me. I’d say to her, ‘Tell me more, tell me more!’”
As he got older, Barker’s passion for history only continued to grow.
“We were all asked to do historical projects around Grade 4, and the project ended up becoming a lifetime passion,” he recalled. “I never stopped the research part of it and when I was ten years old, I started collecting photographs of the community.”
From there, Barker became more and more interested in architecture, eventually going on to study how it related to history.
“To me history and architecture are inseparable because the history that I like to delve into is all about the people and how they settled in the area. I mean the first thing they have to do is put up buildings right? So I’ve been keeping a record of the Township and Village of Burford for a long time and I’ve accumulated all this history.”
Now a civil engineer in Tillsonburg, Barker has worked in the field for about 21 years, and spent 12 years as an Architectural Historian and Built Heritage Specialist.
While he now lives in Norfolk County, the historian said his heart and passion will always reside in the Geographic Township of Burford.
For those interested in taking part in the walks, Barker said the events are free and people can meet him at the parkette at the corner of Maple Avenue and King Street.
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
