Community

For the years covered here, the community was mainly the area covering the Lower School district from McCabe’s store to MacTavish’s. There was also an affinity with the upper district, referred to as “the Hill” and with the Valley, Dad’s homeplace, ' which gave us a kind of fondness for the region and a kinship with its people. To a certain extent Eldon was also a drawing power because of MacPherson’s mill and store, other merchants, Finlayson’s forge, telephone central, resident doctor and beach areas.

In the early years Iona was called Montague or Montague Cross or Irish Montague with the two schools being known as Montague East and Montague West. In 1901 Father James Phelan, the parish priest of the day, named the community Iona, a strange clash it might seem giving a Scottish name to an Irish settlement. It was called after an island off the west coast of Scotland. In that place an Irish monk, St. Columba from Done- gal and one of Ireland’s most famous sons, established a monas- tery in the sixth century. That monastery became widely known as a base of great missionary expansion and centre of conversion for many Picts, Scots and northern English. Seen in this light, Iona was an extremely timely designation for an area of Irish inhabitants.

The main road, running east and west, sliced through the centre of the community with residents on the north being in Lot 57 and those on the south, including most of the Valley, in Lot 58. One of the highest elevations on the Island, Iona was