Thursday, October 29, 2026 · 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Activity Room — 1 S Common St., Topsfield, MA
Local filmmaker Roger Hagopian presents his documentary film, Memories Flow Beneath It, From Valley to Quabbin at the Topsfield Town Library. This 69 minute film traces the displacement of people and the loss of a way of life in the Swift River Valley of western Massachusetts, when the Quabbin Reservoir flooded four towns in order to create water infrastructure for 52 Boston metropolitan communities. Several interviewees include former valley residents, historians, and authors, notably J.R. Greene, who has written numerous books on the subject. There will be a question-and-answer session with the filmmaker following the screening. The ever-westward evolution of the water systems begins with springs on the Shawmut Peninsula of Boston in 1630, an aqueduct from Jamaica Pond, the Cochituate System emanating from Natick, which became insufficient due to the mass immigration of refugees from the Irish Famine, thus drastically increasing Boston’s population. The Great Boston Fire of 1872 exposed the limitations of the water supply, leading to the Sudbury and Wachusett systems. Italian immigrants, some of whom were stonemasons, found work on these public works projects as the system…