Dozens of proud descendants of one of Canada’s biggest families attended a plaque unveiling recognizing their place in history.
Lorne and Ada Potter moved with five children to a farm in Clarington, Ont., in 1927, just before the Great Depression.
While the land was fertile, so too were the Potters, who went on to have 13 more children. They had eleven girls and seven boys, all single births, between 1923 and 1949 and became one of the biggest biological family in Canada at that time.
While their daughter Donna died at six months old, the rest of Lorne and Ada's 17 children had their own families and the estimated 400 descendants of the Potters take great pride in their enormous family tree.
“My mum and dad were the best," Hazel Connolly, nee Potter, told CTV News.
The site of the former farm and two storey brick house along Bowmanville Creek where the Potters lived and which burned down in 1975, has been named as a heritage site by the Municipality of Clarington.
Around 200 people attended a ceremony on Sunday morning to honor the Potters, many of whom still live close to Bowmanville.
Lorne and Ada instilled a strong work ethic in their children, as well as community involvement.
They took pride in the fact that despite the challenges of the times and the size of their family, they never relied on government assistance.
Their children and the next generations shared fond memories of their predecessors.
Their daughter Rita Duncan, 85, reminisced about swimming in the creek and having a large enough family to have their own baseball teams.
A third-generation Potter, Dakota joked that she “can’t get away with anything in this town, you can walk down the street and see your family member. “
The Potter homestead is now parkland and the plaque is a permanent reminder of what started there almost a century ago.
--- With a report from CTV Toronto’s Nick Dixon
