Birr, Ontario

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Birr is a small hamlet in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is located in the Middlesex Centre, at the intersection of Ontario Highway 4 (Richmond Street) and the 13th Concession, approximately 7km north of London.

Despite its small size, Birr has maintained itself and supported various private business throughout the years. There are also currently two churches, three cemeteries, as well as a pond and an island. The pond and the island are located on "the government side", a large portion of land in Birr. The island is located close by the pond and both have been important places to many of the youth in Birr. In the winter, the pond is used as a Hockey rink.

Until it was replaced by a modern low-rise cement bridge in the mid-1970s, Birr had a one-lane iron bridge on the 13th Concession that crossed the Medway Creek. Generations of children and adults used the top of the iron tressel as a high-diving platform into the creek. One local resident in particular would delight swimmers by giving aerial displays of his jack-knife acrobatics from the top of the old bridge each summer.

And on Christmas Eve each year, this same resident would sneak into the old Anglican Church, scale the bell-tower, and ring the church bells at the stroke of midnight to welcome Christmas in Birr. It was a fond tradition, now missed, that he began in the early 1960s and continued every year from that time until his death in 1982.

Birr had a hotel in the late 1800s; afternoon stagecoaches running between London and Lucan, 17 miles to the north, would stop overnight in Birr, in those days the approximate half-way point, and resume travel the next day.