A photographer and a poet

Maitland Avenue owes its name to both a noted photographer, George Forbes Maitland, and his wife, writer-poet Mary Ann Davidson Maitland.

George Forbes Maitland was born on March 24, 1835, in Belhelvie, a village about 13 kilometres north of Aberdeen, Scotland. In his early 20s, he left Scotland to seek his fortune in Canada. That may have been as late as 1857.

Maitland initially settled in Hamilton, where he worked as a photographer, which would become his life career. It was there he met Mary Ann Davidson, a gifted poet, and they married in 1861. One of their six children was George Henry Maitland, who became editor of the Stratford Herald in the early 1900s.

The Maitland family lived in Hamilton (1861-1865), St. Catharines (1869-1874), Stratford (1876-1916) and St. Marys (1916-1928). In about 1876, they came to Stratford, where Maitland set up his photographic........

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