Benares, on Clarkson Road in Mississauga, was built in the 1835 by a retired British Army officer who had served in India, and was the model for Jalna in the series of novels written by Mazo de la Roche from 1927 to 1960. Source.
When asked how long he thought his novels would last, Robertson Davies said, "Well, nobody reads Gilbert Parker anymore." Parker, who was born on this date in 1862 in Eastern Ontario, went on to be a bestselling novelist, an MP in the Westminster Parliament and the head of Britain's propaganda campaign to bring the US into World War One. The Belleville Community Archives received his papers in 2017.