Douro

By Guy Scott

Douro is the township in Peterborough County immediately east of Peterborough City, across the the Otonabee River. The outline of the township is irregular thanks to the river, and Douro is a small township—roughly ¾ the size of other townships in the area. Douro doesn’t contain any true villages. Its southern reaches are serviced by Peterborough City. To the northwest is the village of Lakefield, which like many other villages in our area straddles a river (Otonabee) and is situated in two townships (Smith & Douro). The east side looks to the village of Warsaw in Dummer Township. The north boundary ends at Stoney Lake.

Some early settlers in Douro clustered along the river. But the real impetus for settlement was the arrival of the Peter Robinson Emigration in 1825. Douro received 60 families of Irish settlers; mostly congregating in the centre and southern portions of the township. The Irish were not big on villages, preferring to live on farms with crossroads hamlets as their local focus. The only such cross roads hamlet in Douro was South Douro, located on the corners of lots 5 and 6 between concession IV and V. The hamlet grew up around the usual Irish institutions: a church, cemetery, parish hall, school and a couple of stores with a blacksmith.

Douro was always more of a township rather than a series of communities. The southwest corner of the township was just across the River from Peterborough City and was called Ashburn or Scotch Village. It was always a suburb of Peterborough and was officially amalgamated into the city by 1900. The northwest corner around Lakefield was different from the Irish sections to the south. The very northwest corner was part of Young’s Point. All three of these communities clustered along the river and were different from the rest of rural Douro. In the 1850s, the Government of Canada set up two post offices for Douro: North Douro that became Lakefield and South Douro that became itself. The Name Douro honours a river and valley in Portugal. During the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), the Duke of Wellington led the British Army in several campaigns in the valley and the name was transferred to the newly surveyed township in his honour.

St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in South Douro was made a parish in 1846. A small frame church was built and a cemetery consecrated. All those settlers who had died in the previous 20 years and had been buried on their homesteads were disinterred and moved to the new cemetery. The present magnificent stone church was consecrated in 1893.

When Douro was created a municipality (1850), a town hall was built at the 5 corners on the Peterborough to Warsaw Road west of South Douro. This important road junction rivalled South Douro for a while; containing a tavern, school and cheese factory, but it didn’t have that all important church! The old town hall closed in 1965 and moved to Lang Pioneer Village. A new municipal office was opened in the hamlet of South Douro, further cementing its status as the township seat. In 1999 Douro was amalgamated with Dummer Township as part of the restructuring of Peterborough County. Lakefield village was amalgamated with Smith and Ennismore townships and further left the Douro orbit.

Another feature of (South) Douro was Towns General Store. In 1896, P.G. Towns moved his store from Peterborough to Douro and began a local landmark that hosted the post office and kept the general store tradition alive until 2016. It burned in 2018.