Life on Quaker Road: History, Stories & Goodwillie Genealogy

Goodwillie's Niagara peninsula pioneer farm, vineyard and thriving fruit factory are documented by stories, photographs, tales of First Nations, black history, and Scottish, American, Canadian connections with Quaker Road, Welland, Ontario.

Diane Goodwillie was born in Toronto and spent summers at the family cottage at Long Beach, near Welland, Ontario. She holds a B.A. from Queens University and a M.Ed. from Springfield College, Massachusetts. Following community development work in Newfoundland and Guelph Ontario she moved to Fiji and worked for 24 years for the YWCA, the Canadian High Commission and WWF on women’s leadership, community development and environment education in fifteen Pacific Island countries. In retirement Diane was able to edit her aunt, Ruth Cornett unpublished children’s stories and her father John Ross Goodwillie’s extensive family genealogy to create the book of stories and history titled Life on Quaker Road. Diane remarks: ＂Since Dad and Auntie Ruth are no longer with us, I felt it important to reproduce the information in a way that school children, historians and genealogists could use. The Goodwillie clan extends internationally but my father’s research is not even mentioned on the world wide web. It became an obsession to re-organise, reproduce and make available previously written information. Working long distance has been frustrating but the internet helped me verify facts and discover new information. Before writing, I was lucky enough to visit various stopping off points of the Goodwillie family: Fife Scotland, New Carlisle Quebec, Barnet Vermont and various sites in southern Ontario. I don’t know how my father produced his wonderful 270 page genealogy without computers. I guess that’s why Auntie Ruth only made ten copies of hers!＂