Historic Sites

Academy Theatre

By the late nineteenth century, Lindsay was growing as a county seat on the banks of the Scugog River. It was a busy railway town, and steamships sailed to the wharf from communities like Bobcaygeon. Having been built on a former wetland, Kent Street was still marshy and it was common to see wagons sinking up to their axles. Despite these hardships, progress was a transcending value of the Victorian era, and a performance space would be a wonderful addition to this growing community.

R.J. Matchett and Fred Knowlton led the project to build the Academy of Music. Peterborough architect William Blackwell designed a beautiful building in the Romanesque Revival style, that he would become known for bringing to the region. His masterpiece opened to the public in 1893 as “the most technically perfect theatre in Canada.” With a balcony, it could accommodate 900 guests who could marvel at the proscenium arch and beautiful ceiling. It looked like it belonged in a major city. Three coal furnaces heated the building, which had to be tended continuously, requiring a couple to live in a third-floor apartment. Legend has it that the lady fell down the stairs, died and lives on as “Mary,” a friendly ghost. When something unexpected happens—a door closes, the lights dim, or something goes missing—is it Mary’s doing?

In its early years, the Academy Theatre became known for its stage performances such as vaudeville and local performers. Over the years many well known performers graced its stage: Sammy Davis Jr.; the Marx Brothers; and Marie Dressler, who performed for an audience for the first time, at age 5, in a play her mother staged. The first silent movies appeared in 1918, then talkies a few years later—long before other communities in the area. Motion pictures were revolutionary and soon became one of the most popular forms of family entertainment. By the 1930s, the Academy was primarily operating as a movie theatre. Because it was such an early cinema, early projectors became interesting museum pieces, at Highlands Cinemas and the Ontario Science Centre.

The Academy was a beautiful theatre for its time and had been designed for stage productions. But as movies became the predominant media, purpose-built movie theatres began to appear in other communities. When Century Cinemas opened a few blocks away on Kent Street, the Academy struggled, as the new competitor was better suited to show films. It continued to host Kiwanis Music Festivals and a few live performances, then closed in 1956 and demolition was considered.

In 1963, the newly created Academy Theatre Foundation purchased the beautiful old theatre for $18,000. President Dr. Bill Service and many committed volunteers raised another $40,000 to modernize the building, improving the lobby, offices and stage—including the apron and new lights. With a new heating system, the old coal fired furnaces could be retired. Starting in 1965, it became home to the Kawartha Summer Theatre. That summer Dennis and Maggie Sweeting put on Summer Stock, as audiences came to love these new performances. Guitarist Tommy Hunter, a celebrity from CBC’s Country Hoedown, performed at the Academy Theatre each Friday evening for approximately three summers.

In the 1960s, many families began to acquire their first televisions, then as home movies and digital streaming became nearly universal, going to watch a motion picture lost some of its novelty. Many movie theatres began to struggle. As new generations grew up watching videos, going to watch a live show became something special, just as the first silent movies were to kids of a generation past who were more familiar with live performances, like the public school Christmas pageant. The Academy Theatre came full circle, created for live performances it continues to serve that purpose. Over the years, many local kids’ first appearances on a theatre stage came at the “Grand Old Lady” at the foot of Kent Street.

Alexander Orr Temperance House

By the 1870s, Lindsay was connected by railway to the cities on Lake Ontario, and there was steamship service to Bobcaygeon making long-distance journeys much more practical than it had been a few decades earlier when travel was by canoe, scow, horse or foot. By then, this village was the starting point of the Bobcaygeon Road, which linked Kinmount and Minden, and was a major artery to cadge supplies to lumber camps.

In the nineteenth century, temperance was a prevalent political lobby. Many advocates argued that alcohol was threatening to families and the nation, leading to financial ruin, immorality, sexual impropriety and social collapse. On the other hand, alcohol tended to be one of the most profitable parts of the accommodation business—so it was uncommon for inns to ban alcohol, though many of their guests may have believed in prohibition.

Alexander (Sandy) Orr was born in Scotland in 1817, and emigrated to Quebec in 1840. Around 1865 or 1866, he moved to Bobcaygeon, which was said to be a “rough, whiskey-ruled, backwoods village,” and opened a store and temperance house. “For some time, he encountered violent opposition, because of his decided views in regard to temperance. But he persevered, overcame all obstacles and succeeded in establishing one of the largest and most flourishing temperance houses in the province.” In 1867, he helped build Bobcaygeon’s first Presbyterian Church—which was also controversial for its strong opposition to alcohol. Irvine Junkin, another Presbyterian temperance advocate had his home and store burned one night in 1899—he and his family barely escaped with their lives.

The present stone building was constructed in 1871 with material quarried from Big Bob River. Orr brought stone masons over from Scotland to execute the project. The south end of the building was a dry goods store, with the Orr family living on the second floor. The north end of the building was the Commercial Hotel, where no alcoholic beverages were served or allowed on the premises. After Alexander Orr passed away in 1886, it became the Kenosha Inn.

In the twentieth century, the building has been repurposed many times, including the Magnet Toy & Novelty Shop (during and after the First World War), the Bright Spot Restaurant (1950s), a bookstore, The Source, the Bobcaygeon Public Library (before moving to the former Mossom Boyd Company office on Canal Street). The upper floors have been used for rental apartments. Since 1940, the Masonic Lodge 268 has owned the building, with its temple on the top floor.

Forester's Hall (Kinmount Community Centre)

The Canadian Order of Foresters was a fraternal, mutual aid society that was derived from an ancient English friendly society devoted to caring for the sick. In Canada, the organization came to offer insurance, long before the introduction of medicare. Local clubs (called a ‘court’) were headed by a Ranger, Deputy-Ranger and Physician. Kinmount residents organized COF Court #677 in the 1890s, recruiting 78 members within a year.

Socializing was very important to the Foresters, as they began to organize gatherings and public performances, such as a Grand Concert at the Orange Hall in 1900. In 1902 they bought a vacant lot beside the Northern Hotel, just west of the main street and railway. It opened in March 1903, with a night of performances, which included the Kinmount Brass Band, pianists Misses Hopkins and Graham, and Toronto comic entertainer W.J. White. Over the years it would host many more public events as it became a community centre: political meetings, church suppers and public performances. Author, poet and elocutionist Pauline Johnson would grace its stage. During the First World War, it served as the barracks for Kinmount’s platoon in the Victoria Regiment.

The original Foresters Hall burned in 1922, but was soon rebuilt on the same footprint. In the 1930s, as the community was struggling through the Great Depression, the Hall was no longer able to cover its costs. Howard Hopkins purchased the building and used it for storage and a workshop. In 1950, the Township of Somerville acquired it and reopened it as a community hall. Over the years it would serve as a movie theatre (before Kieth Stata’s Highlands Cinemas became the community’s major attraction), and host meetings, fur buyers’ events, election polls, dances, New Year’s Eve celebrations, suppers, bazaars, concerts, flower shows, a factory for Uncle Stan’s Fertilizers, a sign store, and physical education for the local school. In 1962, the township added a firehall (which was little more than a parking shelter for a truck), which continued in use until the new firehall was built beside the cemetery in 1979. It would be home to the public library until 1999, when it moved to the basement of the new Township of Somerville building on the south edge of town.

In the 1980s, an artisan’s guild formed and moved into the basement of the Foresters Hall, which has expanded several times over the years. Today the Kinmount Artisans Marketplace is home to approximately forty active exhibitors. EarlyOn (Ontario Early Years Centre) offers preschool education and the upper floor continues to host community events. Much as things have changed since 1903, the former Foresters Hall continues to be a centre of cultural activity for Kinmount.

Austin Sawmill

Kinmount grew as a focal point in the forest industries after the Bobcaygeon Road (similar to present day 49, 121 and 35 from Bobcaygeon to Dwight) reached the village in 1858. Though the government built the road to open the region for agricultural settlement, it also became the main route north to supply logging camps. Kinmount was site of the bridge over the Burnt River, located just downstream from where the three main branches of the Burnt River converged. The same year that the road reached Kinmount, John Hunter built a sawmill on the east bank of the river, beside the road. Because the Burnt River was not navigable, there was no practical means of exporting large quantities of lumber, so the mill primarily served local needs.

In 1874, the construction of the Victoria Railway began, which linked Lindsay to Haliburton via Fenelon Falls and Kinmount. That year, Fenelon Falls sawmiller Henry Greene leased the west bank of the Burnt River at Kinmount, so he could build a sawmill between the river and the proposed railway. Once the railway was complete, logs coming down the Burnt River could be sawn at Kinmount, and the lumber loaded on the railway to ship to market. As the site with a waterpower that could operate a mill, with a railway connection, furthest upstream, capturing all three branches of the Burnt River, it had a natural advantage over practically all other milling sites in the district.

John Hunter sold his mill along with the surrounding 200 acres to William Cluxton in 1862 for $2,997. At some point after Greene built the new mill, the former sawmill ceased to operate. In 1883, Hugh O’Leary purchased the mill for $3,000, but he did not live in the village, instead, hiring workers to operate it. Three years later, Lindsay miller Robert Bryans purchased it. John Austin, of Fenelon Falls, worked at the mill, losing a finger in an accident in 1889.

In 1891, Austin partnered with William Craig to buy the sawmill, grist mill, shingle mill, mill reserves and the water rights. Producing pine, hemlock and hardwood lumber along with cedar and pine shingles, Craig & Austin’s mill initially had a capacity of 20,000 feet per day or 4 million feet per year. This made it a moderately large mill. In the 1890s, the largest on the Upper Trent Watershed was J.W. Howry & Sons at Fenelon Falls with a capacity of 50,000,000 feet (it never cut that quantity of lumber, burning a few months after its expansion). At one time there were six mills operating in Kinmount—Craig & Austin was the largest, the only mill that was water powered (the others were steam) and the village’s largest employer.

In 1892, Craig and Austin bought part of the Mossom Boyd Company’s timber limits in Snowdon Township—as this famed firm was beginning to wind down operations at Bobcaygeon. From the 1890s, the Kinmount mill would custom saw logs that local residents brought in. The Austin mill would continue buying logs from local farmers into the mid twentieth century.

In 1896, Craig and Austin added a shed to store dressed lumber, then after the 1900 season they began construction of a new sawdust burner, which was located in the centre of the Burnt River to be completed in time for the 1901 milling season. It was a massive stone block built on a wooden crib, with a metal chimney on top. It was placed in the centre of the river to minimize the danger of sparks and fire spreading to other structures. Elevators carried sawdust across the river to the kiln. In 1900, the mill operated from March to December, cutting 3,000,000 feet of lumber (including 300,000 feet of hardwoods, largely ash and maple, exported to the United States), 15,000 rail ties, and 5,000,000 shingles. The company also had men working in the woods peeling tan bark, before the hemlock logs were floated downstream. At that time, tan bark was worth more than the logs were, and was sold in markets closer to the sites, including some at Huntsville. That winter Craig & Austin were cutting in Dudley and Dysart Townships.

Throughout his life, John Austin was an enterprising man, always with a business venture on the go, and deeply involved in his community. He grew up in Verulam Township and, after attending school in Lindsay, he became a clerk. By 1871, this 22-year-old was operating grocery store in Fenelon Falls’ McArthur Block. His store burned in 1876, but he rebuilt. After retiring in 1880, he became an insurance agent, a business he continued until 1897. In 1890, he partnered with Henry Austin and William E. Ellis to harvest and export large quantities of ice from Cameron Lake. In 1894, he became a founding director of the Fenelon Falls Electric Light Company. First elected to Fenelon Falls council in 1877, he served the village as a school trustee, assessor and tax collector. He served on County Council, as Warden of Victoria County in 1902, Reeve of Fenelon Falls (1889-90) and Somerville. Even after the Kinmount sawmill became his primary business venture, his family continued to live in Fenelon Falls, as he would travel to visit them.

The Craig and Austin grist mill burned in 1902, was then replaced, only to wash away in the 1928 deluge on the Burnt River. The sawmill burned in 1908, then the following year, Austin bought out his partner’s share for $400 as William Craig moved to northern Ontario. Austin continued to operate shanties on timber limits tributary to Burnt River that had been cut over in nineteenth century, cutting about 12,000 logs a year. The mill burned again during the Great Fire of 1942, but was once again rebuilt. At times, the Austin family operated other mills, including one in Galway Township that Joe Handley bought in 1934. In the early 1950s, J. Austin & Sons bought the Norland mill that had once been operated by Sam Bryant, running it for two years, before dismantling the equipment and tearing the building down.

In the 1920s, Percy Sherman worked for Austin. He started as a boy, tying edgings for $1.25 per day during his summer holidays from school. When he was 17, he went on a drive down the Burnt River: “We were tailing, that is getting the logs moving which were tailing the main group going down the river. These were all peeled hemlock and were too slippery for my regular soled boots [causing him to fall into the river off the logs]. … by the time we got to Devil’s Gap [near Lochlin] Bob McKindley and I decided to quit. We were boarding near Donald, and the bed consisted of sleeping in a hayloft.” The drive supervisor, “Claude Austin was disgusted with us. There was not much help about at the time. He drove a Model T Ford Coupe, and we asked him for a lift back to Kinmount with our ‘turkeys.’ Turkeys were what we called our pack sacks, with our grooming utensils and that sort of thing. Well, he was so angry he refused, and we had to walk to Kinmount from Lochlin, along the railroad track. I have a scar to this day, the mark of a blister that formed during that walk home.” When Percy was working at the mill, “you’d start at 7 in the morning, and break between noon and 1 pm for lunch. Then you’d go back to work until 6 pm. Back then, you were paid $30 a month plus board.”

Over the course of the twentieth century the lumber market changed. The days of exporting lumber by train came to an end, as stamped lumber became a requirement for construction. Instead of exporting millions of feet of lumber each year, today tractor trailers bring lifts of spruce lumber produced many miles away. J. Austin and Sons continues to operate as a Castle Building Centre, just up the hill from the old sawmill on the shore of the Burnt River—Somerville Township began to restore it as a heritage site in September 1983. In the late nineteenth century, communities throughout the region typically had at least one sawmill, built at water’s edge to receive the logs floating down the river—being the most prominent buildings and largest employers in town. Today, Kinmount’s Austin sawmill stands as a solitary reminder of the days when logging companies were the largest businesses around.

Balsam Lake Provincial Park

Since it opened in 1968, Balsam Lake Provincial Park has brought a lot of joy to many visiting families. With its wonderful sandy beach and one-of-a-kind playground the park has a lot of offer.
In the 1870s, George Laidlaw purchased the property, being part of his beautiful St. Mary’s estate, overlooking Balsam Lake. He was a notable railway promoter, playing a key role in the development of both the Toronto and Nipissing (which actually ended in Coboconk—it didn’t hurt to be a little ambitious in naming a railway) and the Victoria (Lindsay to Haliburton). Like many gentlemen of the era, he also took an interest in improving agriculture (increasing the efficiency of manufacturing, transportation and agriculture were among the great social causes of the nineteenth century). He was among the very first local farmers to raise goats. His son, Colonel George E. Laidlaw, fought in the Riel Rebellion and Boer War and was perhaps the most enthusiastic local archaeological investigator. The province purchased the property to create a park in the early 60s.
This H.R. Oakman aerial postcard of Balsam Lake Provincial Park dates from shortly after it opened. The changes in the five ensuing decades are quite apparent. The former Highway 46 is still visible winding across the lakeshore, but it is no longer open to off-season vehicular traffic and has become a recreational trail. Early visitors to the park camped in open fields, with little in the way of tree cover, whereas today, everyone wants to camp in open-forested “parkland,” and aside from the beach and parking lot, practically the whole park is at least lightly forested. The waterfront on the other hand, has gone from being heavily tree covered to the much-loved sandy beach of today.

Hawk Lake Log Chute

Once Haliburton’s Most Deadly Rapid for River Drivers — Now a Popular Tourist Attraction
By the 1870s the virgin pine forests had been cutover in most of the Trent Watershed south of Kinmount (except Nogies Creek), and Haliburton was becoming the source of most of the logs for sawmills as far away as Trenton. The most perilous part of river driving was clearing log jams, which typically occurred at rapids. A volunteer would go out on the moving mass of logs, pry free the one that was holding the jumble together, then try to scramble back to shore (without slipping on the slimy wet logs) before getting swept with the logs through the rapids. 13 river drivers were killed at the Hawk River Rapids, the most of any site in Haliburton County. They were typically buried in graves, perhaps marked with a wooden cross (now unmarked) nearby on the shore.
Log chutes made river driving much easier and safer, and there has been a log chute on the Hawk River since the 1870s. Originally operating with a wooden dam, the present concrete structure was built in 1928-29. The last sizeable drive took place in 1947, as the Hodgson-Jones Lumber Company took their logs to Hall’s Lake.
For years the ruins of the timber slide remained on the Hawk River, but beginning in 1999 the structure was restored, including a park and nature paths. The new log chute was built by 9 men in 9 days using chainsaws and sledgehammers (there was no power on site). The grand opening took place in 2005, and the structure survived 2013 flood, but was damaged in spring, four year later. Considering the never-ending repairs that many different levels of government made to the log slides over the years, it is an authentic viewing experience that the structure is not in pristine condition.

Blythe

John and Anne Langton were born into a wealthy mercantile Lancashire family. Their father, Thomas, imported flax and hemp to manufacture sail cloth. They lived in Blythe Hall, near Ormskirk. Thomas and his wife Ellen wanted to provide the best education for their children that they could, so they set out on the Grand Tour of Europe, where their children received private instruction from masters like Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. While travelling, Anne learned to be an artist, while both received an excellent education. However, while they were touring Europe, the family business fell on hard times, so they were forced to return to England and sell Blythe Hall. From then on, the family would look back to their former home—the life and prosperity they had lost.

Though they were in “embarrassed circumstances”, an aunt helped John to attend Cambridge. He then emigrated to Upper Canada, where he hoped to live as a gentlemen, which would not have been possible in Britain given his circumstances. As he arrived on Sturgeon Lake, he found that many of his new neighbours were also younger sons who lacked the means to live up to their expectations back in Britain. John hoped to make his living by speculating in land and farming—which to an English gentleman of that era meant managing the operation with hired labourers doing much of the physical work. It was a proud moment for him on August 20, 1833, as he became “for the first time in my life, a Lord of the soil.”

John lived in a cabin, but in 1837 his parents, sister and aunt Alice crossed the Atlantic to join him. For his family, he commissioned a new two storey home, named Blythe after the old family home back in Lancashire. This new Blythe was one of the largest and most conspicuous houses in the area, and was furnished with butternut panelling. Though beautiful, it was difficult to keep warm. They employed a neighbouring boy, William Dick (later Reeve of Fenelon Township and Member of the Manitoba Legislature) full time as their chopper. He was occupied all winter chopping up two large maple trees a day and hauling the firewood into the house, trying to keep it warm. Despite such efforts, Anne recorded in her journal:

The mercury stood only three degrees above zero [Fahrenheit] in our room whilst we were dressing. At noon it rose to five, and once we contrived to raise it to eight, which is the utmost a good fire has been able to do for it... Much of to-day has been spent in keeping ourselves warm, by which I do not mean standing or sitting over the fires, but going about piling wood upon them, and also with paste and brown paper seeking to keep out the cold wind.

Many of their neighbours lived in log shanties (perhaps with their livestock, often with many children sharing the one room) which were easier to keep warm.

For a gentlewoman like Anne Langton, living in the backwoods of Upper Canada was an ironic life. She and John both recorded their experiences in very descriptive letters to relatives. Later in life Anne published The Story of Our Family., Anne used her artistic abilities to sketch her surroundings. Together they created records of the pioneer experience that no other Canadian community can match.

John had calculated how to manage his farm to ensure that it could be sufficiently profitable that he could live as a gentleman. But he soon began to learn the many hard lessons of farming. His rabbits died. He lost most of his poultry by the fall of 1834, and found them hard to keep over the winter because their feet froze. He had to kill his oxen after one of them was accidentally injured. He found Swedish turnips and mangel wurzel tough sales. He realized “I was led away with the rest of the mania and thought that our time would come sooner than it has.” He would have liked to live as a farmer, but realized that his farm could generate enough to get by, but precious little cash beyond that. This was the life that his neighbours would live, working their whole lives to create a farm from the forest so their children might have the opportunities that came with cleared fields, a barn and a home. His land ventures were also not a profitable as he had hoped. A gentleman with class consciousness like John Langton aspired to much more.

By the 1850s John was running out of time. He was elected to Parliament in 1851 (he later became Canada’s First Auditor General), and moved to Peterborough, but stayed at Blythe for the winter, before leaving for good in May. By 1855, his old genteel neighbour was asking for additional collateral against his life insurance for the mortgage on Blythe, and he sold the farm on April 1, 1856 to Mossom Boyd. This brother-in-law was a Bobcaygeon lumberman, who had migrated as an orphan, much poorer than John—but was a remarkably industrious businessman. Eight days later, Boyd flipped the property to Robert Graham.

The Graham family lived at Blythe for generations, initially using the Langton’s home and barn. As the years passed, better materials were available for construction, and they erected a beautiful brick home and cathedral barn on the site. The family used both homes into the twentieth century, but by mid century the Langton’s home was falling into disrepair and has since been disassembled. Part of the butternut panelling was preserved at Maryboro Lodge Museum. Because of Anne and John Langton’s unique artistic and literary contributions, the site retains a special significance.

Murphy Farm – Kawartha Settlers Village

In 1873, Mary Ann (Fitzgerald) Murphy inherited $800 from her father, Gerald Fitzgerald of Lakefield, on the condition that it had to be invested in real estate for the benefit of her and her heirs. It was unusual for the era that property was left specifically to a daughter and her children, without mentioning the husband. She purchased Block U, part of Lot 17, Concession 10 of Verulam, located just north of Rokeby (in those days, Rokeby was the settlement on the north shore, and Bobcaygeon was located on the island, today both are referred to as ‘Bobcaygeon’) from Joseph Gooley, a Bobcaygeon lumber merchant. It was the beginning of three generations of the Murphy family living on this lot. In 1899, her second son, Gerald, acquired the interest of his mother and siblings, agreeing to pay his mother $25 annually, unless she boarded with him for the entire year. After Gerald passed away in 1938, the property passed to his sons Charles Roy and John Clayton Murphy.

The Murphy family built a beautiful, large home that included hardwood floors, a drive shed and a barn, which was built into the side of a hill, as was customary to allow wagons to roll into both the stable and drive floor. Being located on the outskirts of the village, by the 1930s, Gerald specialized in dairy farming, in an era when most farms were mixed farms. Clayton looked after the cattle, while his brother Roy drove around town with a horse and wagon peddling the milk. When someone wanted to buy milk, he would ladle it from steel cans into their containers.

At the time, there were two other dairies in Bobcaygeon, operated by the Crowe (Kawartha Dairy) and Coulter families. There was also a creamery (George and Suzie Lee), plus several cheese factories in the area. There was no legal requirement to pasteurize milk and only Kawartha Dairy had the equipment for this process. An outbreak of tuberculosis among Bobcaygeon children was linked to the Murphy herd, prompted the infected animals to be killed. Rather than investing in pasteurizing equipment, the dairy sold their operation to Kawartha Dairy, which then became the only dairy operating in Bobcaygeon. One or both of the brothers went to work for Kawartha Dairy.

In 1944, Roy (age 51) married Gertrude (Gertie) Robertson (age 58), and they moved into the farmhouse. Clayton and wife Irene moved to Peterborough, after Roy had purchased his share in the property the previous November. Roy had been living in a two storey house nearby on Dunn Street, which he sold to purchase the farm. Roy passed away in 1955, then Gertrude six years later. She left the property to her nephew Wallace C. Thurston, who lived in Toronto. After her death, the property was not maintained, and the house fell into disrepair, “kids had got into it,” Harry Van Oudenaren later recalled. In 1977, the property passed to the village of Bobcaygeon for tax arrears, then in 1983, the village issued a demolition permit to clean up the old farmhouse. By 1990, the barn, an outhouse and drive shed still stood on the property.

In 1989, the Bobcaygeon Workshop Group opened in Henderson House, which was then located on the north shore of Big Bob Channel, on Front Street, near the Market Square. Artists, carvers, sculptors, potters and other craft workers used Henderson House to meet, spend time together and market their works. Work began on creating a museum in the second storey. This lot had been donated to the village to create a park—which was not taken to include a space for artists. After preparations began to demolish Henderson House, a group of volunteers came together to save Henderson House and transform the Murphy farm into a pioneer village. This group included the reeves of Bobcaygeon (Frank Poole) and Verulam (Neil Oliver). On July 16, 1990, Bobcaygeon Council agreed in principle to devote the Murphy Farm to this new community organization. Countless volunteers did their part to enable Henderson House to move on October 25.

That winter, the site was named Kawartha Settlers Village, and Bert Sevink designed a logo—one of his many contributions to founding the cultural space. Over the years, a pioneer village was assembled by saving many local buildings including the Duggan log cabin (initially located north of Fenelon Falls on 121), the Carriage House from the Mossom Boyd’s Big House, the building from which the Nichols brothers guided fishing parties (Trappers Cabin), the Junkin House, the Orange Hall from Fairbairn Road, a replica of the Bobcaygeon Fire Hall, Fairbairn Church (which for many years had been a chicken coop), the Wray House, the Muir House (formerly the Lindsay Museum) and a shanty from W.T.C. Boyd’s garden. The Murphy’s drive shed was reconstructed, and the outhouse was moved to stand beside the Duggan house. One building at a time, a pioneer village had been constructed, and in 2022 a Visitors’ Centre was built by the gate.

Within a few years, Kawartha Settlers Village became the most popular cultural attraction in the region. True to its founding vision, it was not only a pioneer village, but also housed a great variety of arts, crafts and cultural activities. Thousands of people visit each year to enjoy public events like Settlers’ Day and the Festival of Trees. Today local residents have many fond memories of the times they have spent at Kawartha Settlers Village.

Boyd Museum

Mossom Boyd emigrated as an orphan in 1834 to visit friend John Darcus who had settled west of Bobcaygeon on the north shore of Sturgeon Lake. Darcus persuaded him to stay, and Boyd took up a farm nearby. His friend soon moved on, and Boyd accepted a job working for the miller, Thomas Need, who owned the nascent village of Bobcaygeon. As Need also moved on to other ventures, Boyd was left to manage the grist and sawmills. Other businessmen offered to buy the property, but Need thought it should be saved for the “one who has borne the labour & heat of the day.” Eventually—on September 2, 1869, more than thirty years after Need had first entrusted him with the mills—Boyd completed the purchase of Need’s interest. By the time he passed away in 1883, he had risen to be one of the wealthiest and best-known businessmen in Canada.

Mossom Boyd was an ambitious, hard-driving man. He was not afraid to get his hands dirty, and personally went on log drives as they made their way town the Trent Watershed. His sons grew up in very different circumstances, built on their father’s hard work. Having come of age as members of Canada’s business elite, keeping up appearances was a necessity. They lived in a mansion, behind stone walls, with servants (it was necessary to host many visiting business associates); travelled in yachts or fine carriages; wore fine clothes, smoked imported cigars, and hired private tutors for their children. Mossom’s record keeping had been relatively scant, but his sons were trained in business, and meticulously filed their paperwork, even unsolicited business correspondence (what we would today call junk mail, but in the nineteenth century it was hand written). After Mossom died, his sons decided that instead of conducting the business out of the Big House, they needed an office, which opened on the other side of William Street in 1889.

The Boyds were anglophiles, and their office was an English Cottage Style design. A one-storey tall building, facing the canal, with additional space in the rear, it had tall eyebrow windows set into the roof line that opened with brass levers and locks. Similarly, the interior doors were tall and wide, with brass hardware. In that era, many visitors coming to Bobcaygeon from a distance took a steamship, and the entrance to the building was conveniently located across the street from the village’s lower wharf. Boyd’s grist mill still stood beside the canal, and the sawmill had operated there before being superseded by the larger Little Bob Mill. It was right at the heart of Bobcaygeon.

From the canal, visitors would walk across the road, through a gateway in a stone wall, into the main entrance. As they came in, they saw a long row of cabinets to waist height and a wide cabinet with narrow drawers that held maps relating to the business ventures (their extensive land holdings, timber limits, etc.) They had a couple more banks of drawers, a slant top desk with narrow drawers and a further group of drawers. The company clerk sat on a tall stool behind the desk where he kept the records. A large walk-in vault with double steel doors and a large combination dial was built into the rear wall directly behind the cabinets.

To the right of this room, a fine wooden door led into Mossom Martin (Mossie) Boyd’s office. This is a large space with a fireplace and a large window overlooking the Canal. There are bookshelves on the outside walls, similar to the bookshelves in the front room. Years later, after Sheila Boyd donated the building to house a permanent library, an extension was built on to this office and used by the Township of Verulam, now the Chamber of Commerce.

Another hallway off the main room led down two steps into a wood storage room—needed to feed the fireplaces that heated the building. This storeroom also kept other supplies, including some destined for lumber camps. A large steel vault stood in one corner, and a door led outside to the rear of the building. A staircase at the front of the room led up to the attic, where the records of the company were kept in two rooms. The only light came from a window in each room, built as dormers into the roof.

W.T.C. (Willie) Boyd’s office was on the left side of the main room. Willie operated the Trent Valley Navigation Company, and served as the Reeve of Bobcaygeon. Initially, the Boyd family’s steamships were primarily used to tow logs to the mill and lumber to market (typically via the railway at Lindsay), but by the 1890s, it offered an integrated network to travellers. Willie helped oversee construction of the Lindsay, Bobcaygeon and Pontypool Railway, which ironically was completed just as the sawmill was winding down, and would take much of the traffic from the Trent Valley Navigation Company. But it was a great convenience for Bobcaygeon residents and businessmen. Willie booked passengers and goods for the railway, as he did for the steamship company.

Passing through Willie’s office, the front room of the building served as the Boyd children’s private schoolroom. Mossie travelled to Oxford, where he found an appropriate teacher, Walter Comber, and invited him to emigrate to teach the brothers’ children. The children had a beautiful schoolroom, with pine bookcases, from floor to ceiling and a large fireplace. The next room to the south had a vaulted ceiling and large windows. There were hooks on top of the bookshelves, that Willie used to roll up maps. Four large iron hooks on the ceiling supported ropes that the children could shinny up if the weather would make playing outside unpleasant. Its fireplace was back-to-back with the one in the front room.

Mossie’s daughter Sheila donated the building to become the library (east wing), alongside the offices for Bobcaygeon (centre) and Verulam (west wing) in 1953. She commissioned an addition to house a non-fiction room, and a large room below that was art gallery, where she would teach. John Grant built the addition in 1967, which was carefully designed to resemble the old building. The lumber office had been built before the advent of electricity and indoor plumbing, so Sheila ensured that there was a washroom built onto the art room—the only one in the building.

By the time the office was built in 1889, the Boyd family’s ventures had extended well beyond Bobcaygeon. At the same time, the days of Boyd’s Bobcaygeon mill were numbered—this was the primary source of profit for the company. When Mossom Boyd had started out, there were a great many old growth trees that stood in the way of agricultural development. By the 1890s, timber limits had become quite valuable and rather than spending a fortune on standing timber at the far reaches of the Trent Watershed, or even in the Muskoka Watershed, Mossie Boyd decided to shift production to Cowichan, on Vancouver Island. The Boyds also had an 8,000 acre stock farm near Prince Albert Saskatchewan, and owned lands in the Northwest Territories. Mossie was busy breeding the horns off Hereford cattle and trying to cross cattle with bison to boost beef production—he would be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame for his efforts. But their Bobcaygeon ventures were coming to an end.

The last load of lumber left the Little Bob Mill in 1906. From then on, the Trent Valley Navigation Company never again turned a profit and relinquished its charter in 1915. Mossie passed away in 1914, followed by Willie five years later. For generations their office, homes and the massive barn south of town stood as Bobcaygeon landmarks. Today, the office and barn remain as reminders of the era when one of Canada’s most notable Bobcaygeon business ventures was based in Bobcaygeon. The Big House burned in 1994, and its stone walls were crumbling. Dirk Van Oudenaren and Bernie Gehmair relocated an archway from the home, which now stands in front of the main entrance to the Boyd Heritage Museum, welcoming visitors to learn about the Boyd Family by walking up the steps that once greeted steamship visitors to Bobcaygeon.

Canada Crayon Company (Crayola)

The Crayola brand was developed by Binney and Smith Company. Cousins Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith of New York operated a chemical company making products like red iron oxide pigments for barn paint and carbon black chemicals to make tires black. Alice Stead Binney (Edwin’s wife) had been a school teacher and helped imagine dustless chalk and wax crayons. She proposed the name, derived from craie (French for ‘chalk’) and ola (a popular commercial suffix, that also means ‘oily’). Before long they became one of the best known manufacturers of crayons and chalk. From the beginning, the company has prided itself in ensuring that all its products are safe for children—a pioneering role in a society that used all kinds of toxic products, such as lead paint.
Into the early twentieth century, many well-known corporations only operated in one country—multinationals did not yet dominate practically every aspect of consumer life. While Binney and Smith were consolidating their place in the American market, the Canada Crayon Company was founded in Toronto in 1926. It soon outgrew its facility there, moved to Peterborough, then Lindsay in 1933. They took over a factory that had originally been home to the Boving Company, located on the east bank of the Scugog River, in what is now Rivera Park. Conveniently, it had a rail line running right in front of the factory.
Within a year of moving to Lindsay, the Canada Crayon Company acquired the rights to manufacture and distribute Crayola products in Canada. However, for their first generation, they primarily produced their own brands. Early names included Radiants and Playtime, but Peacock soon became their best known line of crayons. It made chalk under the brands Swan and Goodhue for domestic use, while Sanigene was manufactured in bulk for schools.
In 1958, the Canada Crayon Company became a wholly owned subsidiary of Binney and Smith. From then on, the company primarily produced Crayola products, including their ever popular box of eight crayons. By then Crayola had debuted the 64 colour assortment of crayons. But most kids still found a way to make something wonderful with the 8 colours they had. Initially many of the products were strikingly similar to the ones that had been marketed under different brand names by the Canada Crayon Company. But as the years passed changes were made to the branding and packaging, as the variety of craft supplies multiplied.
In 1965, the company moved from the banks of the Scugog River to 15 Mary Street West. In the years that followed the multinational corporation consolidated its place as the world’s most prominent brand of children’s craft supplies. Acquired by Hallmark in 1984, manufacturing continued in Lindsay for another sixteen years. Lindsay remains the company’s Canadian head office, moving its warehouse to Peterborough in 2016.
After sitting empty for a number of years, the old Canada Crayon Company factory was demolished. Part of the brick façade was saved to furnish two gate posts marking the former site of one of the community’s most famous industries, since transformed into Rivera Park. Today, Crayola plays a bigger role than ever in manufacturing the products that countless families use to have fun together, in the Kawarthas and around the world. While their great grandparents would have felt fortunate to have eight colours of Crayola crayons, today’s kids can play with model magic, fabric markers, clay, sidewalk chalk, bath dropz, glitter markers and STEM science kits. The possibilities of what they can make using Crayola are endless.

Canadian General Electric

GE came to Peterborough in 1891 as the Edison General Electric Company, which made generators and streetcar motors. Over the years the plant has produced a great many products, everything from armaments to nuclear technology. At its peak in 1969, 6,000 people worked at GE, but the factory became less profitable as the years passed, and closed in 2018 amidst claims by former workers that conditions in the plant caused cancer and respiratory diseases.
For generations, GE was one of those companies that had a personal connection for almost everyone in the Kawarthas. Who didn’t know someone who worked there? Everyone used their products. Like Quaker Oats, Crayola and Tinkertoys it was one of the companies inspired local pride in what the region could produce. A generation ago it would be hard to imagine that GE was on its way out.

Coboconk Lime Kilns

In the second half of the nineteenth century, masonry construction became common in the Kawarthas and southern Ontario more generally—stone foundations, brick (veneer) and less commonly solid stone buildings. At that time, most buildings used lime as mortar, which was made by burning limestone in a kiln. At the end of the nineteenth century, Portland cement started to become common—the Peterborough and Kirkfield lift Locks were monuments demonstrating what could be done with concrete.
In 1889, Robert Callan (less commonly Callen) opened the Coboconk Lime Works, having previously made this product at St. Mary’s and Innerkip. He hired Scottish masons to come and build the kilns. Exporting the produce to Lindsay, Port Perry and Toronto, it soon became one of the community’s largest industries. Later operating as the Canada Lime Company and the Toronto Brick Lime Company, it remained a pillar of the local economy until the Great Depression.
To quarry the limestone, workers would drill holes in the rock, to place dynamite charges, which would blast the bedrock apart. The chunks were loaded in wheelbarrows, and shoved up the ramp into the kiln. Workers supplied firewood to fuel the fires, often burning round the clock at extremely high temperatures. After baking, the lime resembled white chalk, which was bagged, then loaded on carts to roll down the main street to the railway station. In Toronto, the lime was combined with clay to make Portland cement. Ben Farrow, who cut firewood for the kilns, recalled that there were up to 12 or 14 teams drawing wood to keep the fires blazing. 60 men worked in the quarry during the summer months. The surrounding sheds kept the firewood and lime dry.
Emma Windatt remembered how village children used to play with the lime. Sometimes when the lime cart was fully loaded, a piece or two would fall off as it made its way up the main street. Local kids would put the lime in a jar, add water, screw on the lid, then throw it in a pond. “There would be a big bubble in the pond, and the water would all turn milky as the jar exploded underwater. The fish would rise, belly-up to the surface, stunned by the explosion. After a time, that got to be boring and we wanted to see the explosion, so we would tie the jar to a willow branch and watch it explode. There would be glass flying all over.” The fun lasted until one child was struck with flying glass in the leg.
During the Great Depression, industries throughout the area were hit hard, as demand for many goods suddenly dropped. A competing kiln opened at Milton, and though locals said it was of inferior quality, it was closer to Toronto, and demand for Coboconk lime declined, forcing the kiln to close. “It was a disaster,” Emma explains. “So many people that had worked at nothing else, and had no other trade, were left without a job.” Nearly a century later, the old limestone kilns remain the landmark welcoming visitors from the south to Coboconk.

Doube's Trestle

Many railways routes were surveyed with a view to capturing the commerce of a district or hinterland for a particular city. For instance, promoters from Port Hope and Cobourg jockeyed over which port would control the commerce of Peterborough. Though in hindsight it might have been sensible to have built it earlier (it instantly became a busy line and was one of the last to be abandoned), a direct line from Lindsay to Peterborough was constructed late in the development of local railways. When this line opened to commercial traffic on January 1, 1884, just over 26 years had passed since the railway came to Lindsay. By then it was a “missing link” in an otherwise fairly complete rail network.
A direct route from Lindsay to Peterborough crossed a drumlin field, which would tend to create a roller coaster. Since trains cannot climb hills (grades are typically kept below 1%) even though the route was carefully chosen, engineering marvels were still necessary. Without the heavy machinery we now take for granted, filling to create embankments was extremely laborious, so it was actually less expensive to build enormous trestles. The original wooden Doube’s Trestle was 1500 feet long and 70 feet high. In 1920 it was rebuilt as a much smaller 700-foot steel trestle, but requiring much more embankment.
Once it was abandoned after a century of railway service and converted into a hiking trail, Doube’s Trestle became a local landmark. The structure is itself spectacular and one of the most popular lookouts in the Kawartha Lakes. Thousands of visitors make the trek annually and enjoy the view of farm fields and a creek meandering through its valley.

Fenelon Falls Post Office

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries public buildings were important symbols in Ontario. Generations of immigrants had moved to the region to chop farms from the forests or help establish new services in towns. Many worked their whole lives just to afford and build a home they could give to their children. Progress was a very important social value, reflected in the beautiful brick Victorian homes and main streets. To have a striking public building was a source of pride for a community. For many small towns, the post office was among the first and most recognizable public institutions.

A new settlement’s first post office was often located in a home or business. James Wallis, who owned the village in partnership with Robert Jameson, became the first postmaster in 1838, with a contract to carry the mail from Manilla to Fenelon Falls. In 1852, a weekly postal route with Lindsay was established. The first building to be a dedicated post office was located where the Fellowship Baptist parsonage is today. Later it was on the east side of Colborne Street, near the present site of Red Apple. When this building burned in 1916, services moved to the McArthur House (now Subway). This was the first post office to have postal boxes, and local businessman Foster Kelly received Box #1.

After much lobbying, Fenelon Falls managed to persuade the Dominion Government to include their building in the federal building plans. In 1935, the cornerstone of the new post office was laid—right at the intersection of Colborne and Francis Streets. It was a memorable moment for the village, complete with speeches, and a parade including the Salvation Army Band. At that time, the community reflected on how their Dominion had become practically independent with the Statute of Westminster, passed just four years earlier, and the sacrifices of the Great War, which had led to Canada’s greater autonomy. The post office would symbolize the Canadian nation in Fenelon Falls. Once again, a large crowd assembled to witness the official opening in 1936. To erect this monumental federal building, the village’s bandstand had to be moved to the market square (now the site of the cenotaph).

Though beautiful and symbolic, as the years passed, the building came to have drawbacks—notably parking for customers and delivery vehicles. A generation later, a new post office would be constructed on Market Street, which was smaller, less conspicuous, but more functional in terms of delivering letters and parcels. At the time, some village residents were opposed to the move to a new location. The opening of the second post office was not accompanied by anything like fanfare of the 1930s. This second post office continues to serve Fenelon Falls, while the 1936 post office lives on as the CIBC.

Government House

Over the course of the nineteenth century, lumber companies harvested practically all of the large, straight pine trees tributary to the Trent River that could be floated downstream to market. By the 1830s, trees were being felled along the Kawartha Lakes and in the second half of the century, pines tributary to the Burnt and Gull Rivers were felled. To float logs downstream, the lumber companies built dams to control water levels, and timber slides to ease the passage of logs over rapids and waterfalls. They tried to take advantage of the heavy flow from the spring melt to sweep logs downstream.

Up to the 1870s, each company made the improvements that were necessary to float out their logs. But as multiple companies were relying on the same supplies of water and the same improvements (which may have been built by a rival company), questions soon arose about who had the right to the watercourses and the valuable supplies of water that they contained. As the Trent Canal was being constructed, how should the needs of water for navigation be balanced with log driving? In 1872, a group of lumbermen including Mossom Boyd created the joint-stock Gull Waters Improvement Company to manage improvements. This scheme soon collapsed due to the opposition of other operators, prompting the Ontario Government to take over the management of their improvements two years later, as it committed to maintain them.

Into the early twentieth century, the upper reaches of the Gull River watershed were fairly remote. They could be accessed by either the cadge roads that the lumber companies created (which were often little better than trails through the woods) or by paddling and portaging the waterway. The journey to Big Hawk Lake from the villages where lumber companies had their mills or from government offices would take several days. Whether it was the lumber companies or the government managing the system, accommodations were needed for dam keepers.

It is not known when the first building was erected to house a dam keeper at the foot of Big Hawk Lake, but it is suspected that an early one-room cabin lives on as the kitchen of Government House. By 1900, the forests tributary to the Trent Watershed had been cutover. Though log drives would continue into the 1920s, managing the dams for the navigation on the Trent-Severn Waterway was becoming more important, as the drives were becoming less frequent. Since the waterway was federal jurisdiction, while timber limits were provincial, the federal government took over the dams. A dam keeper was needed on site to manage the dams on Big Hawk, Mud, Trout, Crab, Paint and Kennisis Lakes, travelling by canoe.
The Dominion government built a house for the dam keeper at Big Hawk Lake. Because the distance to other government offices, the building was used to accommodate officials performing many different government functions, including a lock-up in the basement—hence the name Government House. The bars on the basement window would live on as a relic of one of its uses. For a period of time, the only buildings on the lake were Government House and Game Warden Wally Scott’s place on Scott’s Point (his son Bill served as MP, granddaughter Laurie as MPP). E.S. “Pete” Grozelle of Coboconk was the first dam keeper to live at Government House, but William H. Hewitt is probably the most memorable occupant, starting in 1912.

By 1923, better roads had reached Big Hawk Lake, which meant that the dam keeper no longer needed to live on site. Bill and Alice Hewitt then moved to a home on Hall’s Lake, as he continued to work as dam keeper until March 1951. In the years that followed, the building was used to house workers and supplies for dam repairs. For many years, the remains of an amphibious alligator tug, which was used to winch booms of logs across lakes, was rotting on the beach in front of Government House. In 1941, Robert Butler purchased the building, then the land in 1949, at a total cost of $504.65. In 1973 John Logan bought the property and alongside his wife Joan Hamilton would restore it in the years the followed.

Handley Lumber

As villages were surveyed throughout the Kawartha Lakes region in the nineteenth century, many were located at cataracts on the Trent Waterway, and typically land was set aside to build mills. Fenelon Falls was no exception, having multiple mill reserves. It originally had mills on either side of the Falls—more recently transformed into a pair of hydro generating plants. The days when just about every town had a saw and grist mill processing wheat and lumber for local use and export are a distant memory. Handley Lumber is one of the few local mill reserves that still has a mill on it.

In the early twentieth century, the site was home to a planing mill. In that era, the village was rapidly developing and much of the trim, (wooden) windows and doors that was then fashionable was manufactured locally. In 1936, the property passed from Fred Chambers to Joe Handley Jr., who made a living clearing land, milling the logs and pasturing cattle. Joe was operating a shingle mill in Burnt River and also had a sawmill on the Third Concession of Somerville. While Chambers had used the property primarily to machine lumber, in early years, Joe exported a lot of lumber. In 1937, he bought a tractor trailer to facilitate shipping lumber to Toronto.

When J. Handley and Sons opened in Fenelon Falls, a few years had passed since the last log drives had come down the Trent Watershed. But for a generation afterwards, many farmers spent the winter getting out logs off their farms for sale. Joseph would drive around the region, purchasing logs that he would truck to his mill and process. From about the 1960s and 1970s on, many farm families had off-farm employment, and ever fewer spent winter working in the bush. At the same time, requirements for stamped lumber in construction would make mass-produced, spruce lumber imported from other regions the industry standard. In 1964, Joseph’s son Ray Handley joined BOLD: Better Ontario Lumber Dealers, a buying platform that would evolve into Castle Building Centres Ltd. In the years that followed, the volume of sales vastly increased, as did the variety of products that were used in local construction.

Handley Lumber would pass to Ray’s sons, then his grandsons Chris and Tim. Now in its fourth generation, Handley Lumber carries on as Fenelon Falls’ lumber yard. The old red mill, remains a familiar sight on Helen Street and much of the belt-driven machinery is still operational, as newer equipment has been introduced. Third generation owner Ken Handley continues to work in the mill, making products like flooring.

Kawartha Dairy

When Jack and Ila Crowe opened a dairy at Bobcaygeon in 1937, it was just a simple three-room building, where the cold storage was refrigerated with blocks of ice from the lake. They picked up milk in galvanized steel cans by wagon, using horses and boats to deliver glass bottles to their customers. In the 1950s they introduced ice cream, and in the 1960s expanded to Minden. Today the dairy has 10 retail outlets and is popular across Ontario.
On the left side in the original picture is Wellington and Clara (Junkin) Johnson’s house, later owned by their son George. Being located so close to the production line, they constantly heard the sounds of the milk cases coming down the rollers. The building still stands behind the façade of the expanded dairy.

Lindsay Public Library

Lindsay had a reading room as early as 1860, later a 1,600 volume collection on the second floor of the Grand Trunk Railway Station, which continued to serve dues-paying railway employees and the public through the 1920s. In between, a Mechanics’ Institute was formed, laying the groundwork for the present-day public library system. In 1904 the public library was built through an Andrew Carnegie grant. A few years after the original image was taken, a large two-storey addition was constructed to the immediate east of the original building. Since then the lawn in front of the library has been landscaped into a beautiful public greenspace.

Lindsay Wharf

In the nineteenth century, Lindsay grew as a transportation hub, linking railways with the Trent Waterway. For generations, Lindsay’s wharf was a centre of commercial activity as goods were loaded and unloaded from steamers. Many visitors to the Kawarthas caught a steamer at the wharf to enjoy a pleasant outing or visit one of the villages on the surrounding lakes. In the nineteenth century, many local communities were not served by railways, just roads and the waterway, for instance: Bobcaygeon, Rosedale, Sturgeon Point, Buckhorn and Curve Lake. Given the state of the roads, long distance travellers to these communities typically took a steamer, often departing from Lindsay’s wharf.

Livery Stable

In the nineteenth century, many travellers to Fenelon Falls came by boat, landing at one of the village’s wharves—above and below the falls. As visitors often carried their trunks by hand, it was very advantageous for a hotel to be located near the wharf. In 1874, the Quebec and Ottawa House burned down, and was immediately replaced by Joseph McArthur’s beautiful brick hotel on the northwest corner of Colborne and Water Streets (now Subway). In 1882, construction began on the Fenelon Falls lock, which entailed excavating tremendous quantities of stone as labourers painstakingly cut a canal around the Falls. As they chipped stones from the riverbed, it produced plenty of good building material, that Noble Ingram (who recently purchased the McArthur House) used to build stables for his hotel.

In the nineteenth century, the stables were used by travellers with horses arriving at the hotel. By the 1920s, some travellers were beginning to use automobiles instead. In 1936, Dick Bulmer moved his blacksmith shop into the old stable—which was an ideal location, as much of his business was shoeing horses. Before the advent of school buses around 1950, many rural students travelling to attend Fenelon Falls Secondary School brought their horses, and kept them at either Dick Bulmer’s shop or the Brooks Hotel (later George Wilson, now B. Armstrong Contracting).

Dick Bulmer’s blacksmith shop was a favourite hangout, especially for men. It was loud, smoky and dirty, but none of this dissuaded the fellows who gathered for euchre—after a lifetime of manual labour, many of them felt at home. Dick was the village’s trickster, and visitors were never sure what prank he was going to pull next. One of his favourites was the dead-finger-in-the-box trick. His hands were blackened from his work, and he had a box with a hole in the bottom, which he would slide his finger through. Telling a story about how his uncle went to war, and all they sent back was this finger, he would encourage his visitor to touch it, only to lift it as they did. His chums would enjoy the sight of seeing another victim run out of the shop screaming. One prank involved shocking people who sat on an electrified bench.

After Dick retired in 1976, Daisy and Frank Kinsinger opened the Livery Stable Gift & Sportswear store, which had a great location, facing the locks. Surviving a fire on November 30, 1990 and a flood in 2000 it subsequently became Livery Stable by Apples of Gold under new management. In 2015, Vinh and Agatha Mac purchased the property, substantially reconstructing it four years later to become the Fenelon Falls Brewing Company. In November 2023, Waterbridge Confectionary Ltd. purchased the brewery, appointing Jason and Heather Lynn from Murphy’s Lockside Pub and Patio as managers, while adding a popular selection of their chocolates.

Locust Lodge

In 1924, Thomas Edgar's widow opened Locust Lodge. When the Edgar family operated the lodge, it was a vibrant, turquoise and yellow building, with brightly coloured wooden chairs on the shaded lawn out front. The old stone wall still remains, and there are still colourful chairs by the water, but many of the mature trees have been taken down—though it appears that one of the small trees in the original picture may be still standing, exhibiting its distinctive shape in front of the building.

Old St. James

St. James Anglican Church is among the oldest organizations in Fenelon Falls. Before the advent of public schools, many children received their education through the church. It helped care for sick and elderly—for most people, giving to church was their primary charitable donation. The Church of England (Anglican) had a close association with the Government of Upper Canada. Many of the most prominent colonial officials were Anglicans, notably, Bishop John Strachan. The same was true locally, as the most prominent gentlemen in Fenelon Falls were Anglicans.

Three aspiring young gentlemen, James Wallis, John Langton (Anne’s brother, later Canada’s First Auditor General), and Robert Dennistoun (later a Peterborough judge) were pivotal in establishing the Church of England at Fenelon Falls—fundraising, collecting subscriptions to support a minister and petitioning the governor for grants and a clergyman. Wallis personally conducted services until a permanent minister could be secured, and also donated lots for the chapel and parsonage (which was originally on the north side of Francis Street, near the lake). Since James Wallis and Robert Jameson owned the village, they could choose any site for the church. They selected the hill overlooking the village—so St. James Anglican Church was literally a light on the hill—a symbol that local parishioners would have understood. With the forests cleared off the church hill, it was one of the first buildings that visitors to Fenelon Falls would see.

On May 6, 1838, Rev. C.T. Wade opened St. James Church, which was a small log chapel, built on the church hill, complete with a porch and belfry. Anne Langton recorded “the pews are left without doors, to obviate exclusiveness, but as some of them are paid for by individuals, there will be some appropriation of them, and this in so small a place is undesirable.” On April 24, 1839, the congregation held a bee to make a road up the hill to the church, and that same year, they welcomed their first permanent minister, Rev. Thomas Fidler. He volunteered to teach school, however, attendance was spotty at best.

Rev. Fidler served the community until May 15, 1847, when he tragically drowned. He was trying to cross the Fenelon River above the falls, along with two brothers who were assisting him, named Sinclair. Though the waters were high with the spring run off, they paddled across above the falls to a landing and grabbed some branches. But they wanted to land at a point further downstream, so they let go. Swept out into the current, facing the wrong direction, they tumbled over the mill dam and falls, all three perishing.

The first St. James Anglican church burned around 1850, and was replaced with a much larger frame building on the same site, which would serve the congregation until 1902. The location of the original village chapel had been symbolic, but in time it was not found to be the most practical choice. The church hill was quite steep, and it was difficult to access with horses and carriages, especially in winter. As the congregation outgrew this church at the turn of the century, the third St. James Anglican Church would be constructed at the bottom of the hill, closer to Colborne Street.

Once it was no longer used for Sunday service, the church on the hill continued to stand—and it remained one of the most prominent buildings in town. The trees had been cleared off the church hill. As the years passed the building fell into disrepair. In 1950, Ernest Hand purchased the old church and property hoping to save it from demolition. He repurposed it as a youth hostel for cyclists, walkers and hikers. Boarders would pay 50 cents to stay overnight—with a limit of three nights.

Into the mid twentieth century, St. James Anglican Church remained one of the most prominent buildings in town, though the forests on the side of the hill were regrowing. But it was also increasingly falling into disrepair. Early in the morning of July 22, 1967, the building caught fire and structure was subsequently demolished. The foundation remains alongside the pathway at Old St. James. In 1975, Fenelon Falls’ water tower was built further north on the church hill—and became a new community landmark. The old Church cemetery remains on site, which has become a quiet and peaceful greenspace.

Pattie House

For generations Coboconk’s Pattie House has been one of the best-known watering holes in central Ontario. Originally Keys Hotel, it was located in a logging town, and many of its customers were lumbermen. Its reputation for serving hard drinkin’ and fightin’ men only grew as the years passed and many communities surrounding Coboconk went dry. People would drive from miles around to kick back a few at the Pattie House… then drive home. Up to the mid twentieth century, impaired driving was much more common, and not as strictly punished as it is today… but the number of fatalities spoke for themselves.
John Keys died in 1879 at the age of 45, “from use of intoxicative liquids for several years.” His widow, Sarah Anne (McCullough) married her bartender John Pattie, hence a new name for the establishment. The hotel was very successful, so the Patties purchased the Queens Hotel across the bridge to handle the overflow from the Pattie House. It came to serve a very diverse clientele, including a great many summer visitors.
In the next generation, Susan (Keys) Jackson was a very devout Anglican, who would allow no irreligious activities on Sunday. Her son Harry Jackson, who was gassed in the Great War, sold the business in 1937. Since then, it has changed hands many times, but it retains a special place at the heart of Coboconk.

Peterborough Lift Lock

By the 1890s, construction on sections of the Trent Canal had progressed to the point where the Government of Canada felt it prudent to complete the waterway in its entirety. Two of the highest drops were to be bridged by liftlocks. R.B. Rogers, supervising engineer was despatched to Europe to study three liftlocks; the only ones in use in the world at this time. Rogers was a brilliant engineer who designed both liftlocks on the Trent Canal. The one at Peterborough was 65 feet high, making it the largest in the world. Kirkfield came in at 49 feet, the third highest in the world.

The locks use a simple theory of physics to raise and lower large tanks of water. As one basin is raised, the other is lowered. The Peterborough Liftlocks was officially opened on July 9, 1904, and remains one of the engineering marvels of our area. You can actually ‘ride’ the liftlocks in a tour boat: the same as travellers did 108 years ago!

Peterborough Normal School

In the first half of the nineteenth century, to the extent that education existed, it was typically undertaken by the church or volunteer teachers helping neighbourhood kids from their own home. A large proportion of the population was illiterate. During the second half of the nineteenth century, schools were built throughout each township, so in theory, there would be a school within walking distance of each child. Though there were some male teachers, most school teachers were young, unmarried women. It was customary that if a woman married, she would retire from teaching because it was expected that she would have a family and need to care for them. It would also be unusual for a married man to work as a teacher—most people would not think of teaching as a profession that would support a family.

In nineteenth century rural communities, having any education beyond elementary school was unusual. Lindsay’s Union School, built in 1863, offered both primary and secondary education, but it was the only such school in the county, and primarily served Lindsay residents. Around the turn of the century, some schools located in other villages began to offer continuation courses (which would later become secondary schooling), but to attend school families had to figure out how to get to school. Many rural students had to board to attend continuation schools. Many teachers in rural schools just had primary education, and some were scarcely older than their senior students.

Egerton Ryerson oversaw the opening of the first Normal School in Canada West (later Ontario) in 1847, which would introduce student teachers to the norms of this profession. But it would not be practical for most young teachers from the Kawarthas to attend. In 1908 the Province of Ontario commissioned four new normal schools, including one in Peterborough, that made it far easier for aspiring teachers to attend. But it remained a considerable investment for rural families to find a way for their children to attend Continuation School, then Normal School. To the mid twentieth century, some teachers walked alone into a one room school to become a teacher having completed Grade 12, plus a six-week summer course.

In the first half of the twentieth century, many new teachers from the Kawarthas were graduates of the Peterborough Normal School. For rural students who had grown up spending practically their whole life in an isolated farming neighbourhood, architect Francis R. Heakes’ beautiful red brick and stone specimen, with a medal-clad dome, had quite an impressive appearance. Most students would attend for one year, as they learned the norms of the teaching profession.

Students had the chance to participate in a few extracurricular activities while they attended. For many years, the Peterborough Normal School’s Literary Society was one of its most popular clubs. In 1940, it had separate athletic societies for male and female students. Both genders played badminton. Girls organized a basketball game against Peterborough Collegiate Institute, while boys organized hockey, softball and deck tennis. The boys organized a dance before Easter.

Around 1950, school busing became standard allowing practically all students to attend secondary school. After the Second World War, most families enjoyed a new prosperity and many more students were able to attend college or university. Peterborough Normal School was renamed as a Teacher’s College in 1953. After it closed, the Peterborough County Board of Education purchased the building, added an extension and used it as the Board Office until 1998.

Quaker Oats

In the late 1890s, the American Cereal Company built a Canadian factory on the west bank of the Otonabee River in downtown Peterborough. Founded in 1888 as seven major oat millers merged, it would be renamed Quaker Oats in 1901. Best known for processing rolled oats, the company also produced cereal and livestock feed. During the First World War, the company increased production to meet wartime demands, as they helped to produce rations. Suddenly, on December 11, 1916 the manufacturing plant exploded.

Witnesses of the event remembered the sweet smell as the food burned, but for the workers caught up in the catastrophe it was a horrific situation. One man was trapped in the grain elevator, buried up to his neck. Heroically, other workers dug him out as the building burned around them. Others slid out of the burning building on their bellies to get below the clouds of smoke. It took days to extinguish the inferno and once the smoke cleared, twenty-three people had died. Cereal dust had caused the explosion.

Quaker considered rebuilding in London, Ontario, but was persuaded by Peterborough City Council to remain. In the process the municipality committed to build the Hunter Street Bridge and the London Street foot bridge, which made it easier for labourers to walk to work. These projects cost a fortune--$525,000. The new Quaker factory’s products included flour and oats, and it once again produced these commodities in bulk to meet Second World War time needs. The production of flour lasted until the 1960s and in the years that followed the company introduced new products, as it also purchased other brands. One of these brands, Gatorade, acquired as part of Stokely-Van Camp in 1983, grew to become the most popular sports drink, prompting Pepsi to acquire Quaker Oats in 2001. PepsiCo continues to produce almost all Quaker products marketed in Canada at Peterborough.

Queen's Hotel

Coboconk is home to two notable old hotels. One has become one of the best-known establishments in the area, while the other, has served the community in many different ways over the years.

Nineteenth century travel was often slow and laborious, so it might take several days to make a journey that today would be accomplished in a few hours. Because Coboconk was the terminus of the Toronto & Nipissing Railway, the first line to reach north Victoria County, a lot of traffic came to Coboconk, both as a point of transshipment to neighbouring communities, and because there were many tributary logging operations up the Gull River. It was therefore an obvious location to build a hotel.

Amos Ferin (also spelled Fern) opened the first hotel in town, which was a dry establishment—less common (and lucrative?) than the alternative, but catered to a large and vocal subset of the contemporary population. Owning the property bounded between the river and Baseline Road, from Highway 35 to Elizabeth Street, he sold part of his holding to William Simpson, who built the Queen’s Hotel in 1873, and operated it with his wife. For its day, the Queen’s Hotel was an impressive structure, with solid brick walls and a full basement, 1424 square feet per floor. The ground floor had two guest rooms on each side, with a grand central staircase leading upstairs. The upper two floors contained 14 or 15 rooms, and a beautiful verandah stretched across the front of the building. In late nineteenth century Coboconk, it was perhaps the most conspicuous building in town, being so well constructed, and located right on the river. For anyone arriving in town by steamer, it would surely be one of the first things they would notice.

For its prominent appearance, over the years it passed through many hands, while the competing Pattie House, quickly made a lasting reputation for itself. The Pattie House was the legendary watering hole for the rambunctious river drivers. In 1916, Mrs. Sarah Anne Pattie purchased the rival Queen’s Hotel, to serve as overflow for the Pattie House. At that point both buildings could host 80 guests each. Ed Jackson managed the Queen’s Hotel for his mother-in-law, then after her death it passed to his son Harry, who offered both daily and monthly rates ($3 to $8 per month).

In the early 1920s, the Home Bank operated on the north side of the main floor, being the only financial institution in town. When it failed in 1923, it was a catastrophe for many local residents, who had put away what little money they had to be ready for whatever surprises life had in store in an age when there was no welfare, Medicare, or old age pension. A few years later the great depression hit, and many families never got it back. The Standard Bank set up shop in its place, followed by the Sterling Bank and the briefly the Commerce Bank, which then moved across the road. Often the bank manager lived on site. In 1938, Harry Jackson opened a garage next door.

In the early 1940s, the village of Coboconk was looking to open a community hall, and bought the Queen’s Hotel, only to decide to build an arena and community centre just off Baseline Road. In 1948, Arnold and Phyllis Richardson bought the property, converting the top floors into apartments, and installing indoor plumbing—up to that point, the hotel had gotten by with an outhouse. They lived on the back apartment on the second floor. There were two other apartments on that floor and another above. Each had 2 bedrooms, living room, kitchen and washroom. Arn was a baker, and turned the former bank into a bakery. Ably assisted by Charles Routley, Richardson packaged his bread for sale in nearby communities like Burnt River, Kinmount, Minden and Norland. Few locals would forget the taste of their chelsea buns. After Arn sold his bakery, he operated a small snowmobile repair shop.

Potter Kit Ross set up her studio at the Queen’s Hotel, working alongside Tessa Kiddick and Bill McKillop. Later on, Jan Griffin was a hairdresser, then Bea Phillips opened a small restaurant. Next up was Harriet Millyard, who operated the drugstore across the road (Souter’s), and converted the south half into a laundromat. Forty years later, it is still filled with washers and dryers. Today, the north half is Tyler Higgins’ Law Office.

South School

In the 1840s, schooling in the new colonial settlements was typically voluntary, conducted in either homes or churches. John Taylor, a carpenter (his projects included the Langton’s home Blythe) was instrumental in setting up the first school in the township in a log cabin on the largest of Bobcaygeon’s islands, which was operational by 1846. For its time and place it was unusual to have a purpose-built school. Taylor personally taught the school and his family was also instrumental in setting up the Methodist Church, Mechanics Institute (which is now called the Public Library) and the Red School (S.S.#9 Verulam) which was immediately south of Bobcaygeon. By the 1860s, there was still a log schoolhouse on the island, and also one in a lean-to attached to a tavern in Rokeby (as the north shore of Bobcaygeon was known). At the time it was important to have a school within convenient walking distance for all children.

In 1873, new brick buildings superseded both schools serving students living around the rapids between Sturgeon and Pigeon Lakes. The Rokeby School was a one storey building (budgeted at $1,200), while the Bobcaygeon school had two large classrooms (budget $2,400), one on each floor. W. Cosh constructed both schools, at a total cost of $5,190. In that era, village schools often contained very large classes by present-day standards, where multiple grades were taught together. To have two classrooms so that students could be divided by grade, was better than most students could expect in that era.

In 1889, Messrs. Cosh and Lancaster built an addition costing $2,560 on the back of the school, augmenting it to a total of four classrooms. That year, it received a 250 pound school bell. Two years later, fire drills were introduced, a new requirement of the Department of Education. In the early twentieth century, continuation classes (later called secondary schooling) were sometimes taught at the south school, when a qualified teacher was available and enough students enrolled—particularly from 1920 to 1929. After 1929, continuation courses were taught at the Hillcroft School which was located on the Fenelon Road, at the village’s northwest corner. That year, Rokeby’s public school closed, as its students were transferred to the south school. Miss Bonnell bought the Rokeby building in 1937 for $600. That year, Isla Herbert introduced formal music classes at Bobcaygeon’s public school.

Hillcroft closed in June 1953 as the Victoria County School Board consolidated its students into Fenelon Falls High School (later Fenelon Falls Secondary School)—made possible with the advent of school busing. The old “Hillcroft High” then could be used to alleviate overcrowding at Bobcaygeon Public School (as the south school was then known). In 1956, a new Bobcaygeon Public School opened on Balaclava Street, which included six classrooms. In 1969, the surrounding one-room schools closed, as Bobcaygeon’s building was vastly expanded to accommodate all of Verulam Township’s elementary students. In 1978, a new public school opened in Dunsford to educate students from south Verulam.

After the south school closed, K. Reid purchased the building. Since then, it has been repurposed many times—Cornerstone Furniture, Dr. Fagan’s Office, Pat Warren’s Radiology Clinic, a Buy and Sell and an Art Gallery to name a few. More recently it has been the home of Jolie Hair Studio, Kelli Lovell Real Estate and Muster Point. But for all the changes over the years, the building is still recognizable as the old schoolhouse, though the belfry and the front chimney have disappeared.

Victoria County Court House

In 1861 a devastating conflagration tore through downtown Lindsay, levelling much of the old wooden downtown. Just as Kent Street was being rebuilt with brick, locally sourced white bricks were masoned together to build a courthouse for the newly created Victoria County. A gaol and registry office followed, both located in the same block. For many years, this Italianate building served as both the County council chambers and courthouse; it now functions as City Hall for the City of Kawartha Lakes.

The Sandbar at Sturgeon Point

Before Sturgeon Point was developed as a tourist destination and cottage community beginning in 1876, the Sandbar at Sturgeon Point was one of the most noticeable natural features on Sturgeon Lake. Sturgeon Point was an unusually pretty locale—located where the three arms of the lake converged, affording views in all directions. Sturgeon Point was made of sand and gravel, soils that were so well drained that it did not support forests that were as dense as the surrounding countryside. This “parkland” was an appealing place to stop while paddling on Sturgeon Lake—and was not well suited to agriculture. The Sandbar, projecting out into Sturgeon Lake, made a natural landing.

In 1876, steamboat operator George Crandell transformed Sturgeon Point into a summer destination. In the late nineteenth century, other than the railway (which never served Sturgeon Point) steamboats were the fastest mode of long-distance transportation. The trip from Lindsay to Sturgeon Point took between 1:20 and 2 hours depending on how many stops were being made on the way. Many people would enjoy an excursion of that distance on a steamer, but to spend any time at Sturgeon Point, a hotel was needed. Built just east of the Sandbar, with a wharf out front, Crandell’s Sturgeon Point Hotel featured a beautiful two-story verandah. In the original advertisements, its aesthetics were so exaggerated that, when the artist’s rendering was compared to a photograph, one might not realize that they were the same building. The promotions worked, and the Sturgeon Point Hotel soon became a luxurious summer resort, with the sandbar as a popular place for tourists to swim and enjoy the sights of Sturgeon Lake.

While the Sturgeon Point Hotel was operating, the Sturgeon Point Regatta was a huge event, bringing thousands of visitors from a considerable distance. As the crowds gathered to watch the races, the hotel and Sandbar were very busy locations. Crandell moved on to other ventures and sold the hotel, but it continued to be a local landmark until it burned on June 15, 1896, and was not rebuilt. An era at Sturgeon Point suddenly ended—it would no longer be a destination for mass tourism.

After the Sturgeon Point Hotel burned, the grounds were subdivided and sold for private cottage development. In the decades that followed, automobiles replaced steamships as the common mode of transportation to visit Sturgeon Point, which increasingly became a waterfront community, rather than a tourist destination. The Sandbar continued to be promoted on postcards in the early twentieth century, even after the development of the adjacent lot. (Note the colouring in the original postcard was done by an author who had presumably never seen the actual vista, including Swananoah’s Boat House, which appears in the background). Today the Sandbar is much smaller than it was at the start of the twentieth century. It remains an interesting geographic feature, to reflect on how very different the site was in the late nineteenth century when so many visitors gathered at the Sturgeon Point Hotel and the nearby Sandbar. Though it can be seen from water while rounding Sturgeon Point, it should be respected that the Sandbar is now private property.

Sturgeon Point Union Church

Sturgeon Point has sandy and gravelly soil, so it was not well suited to agriculture, but was more open than the surrounding forests, and was a beautiful spot to spend a summer day, having views of all three arms of Sturgeon Lake. When this waterfront did not develop as farmland like many other nearby lots did, Lindsay steamboat Captain George Crandell realized its potential. He founded the Sturgeon Point Hotel in 1876, and surveyed cottage lots for sale. In the years that followed, Sturgeon Point became a tourist destination and cottage community. Many of the cottagers and visitors were Lindsay business owners.

The opportunity to attend church was important for the visitors and summer residents at Sturgeon Point, however, they belonged to different denominations. To found a church at Sturgeon Point that could be inclusive, they agreed to make it non-denominational. In December 1888, trustees acquired a lot for $75, then erected a gazebo-like structure, which opened the following year. Since Sturgeon Point was a summer destination and cottage community, there was no need for year-round services.

In 1915, Clara (Ellsworth) Flavelle (later Lady Flavelle) gifted a beautiful new church to the community, to replace the old gazebo which had fallen into disrepair. Inspired by a building she saw while visiting Georgia, she hired Toronto architect A. Frank Wickson to design an octagonal church. With windows on seven sides, the eighth side incorporates the pulpit, choir seats and organ. The building also includes a vestry and anteroom. The ceiling slopes upwards from each wall to a centre post. Dormers on the roof admit additional light, and a belfry perched on the peak allowed the church bell to call the community to Sunday morning service. Clara ensured that the building was finished with Georgia pine. To allow for the larger design, the church acquired the adjacent lot, which had a cottage on it at the time.

The Sturgeon Point Union Church was presented to the community on July 8, 1915. Captain Charles Gray’s steamer Lintonia brought a crowd from Lindsay, allowing a total of 400-500 people to attend. The church was filled and many more listened from chairs outside the building. In the spirit of co-operation, the ministers from three Lindsay churches: Cambridge Street Methodist, Cambridge Street Baptist and St. Andrew’s Presbyterian all cooperated in the dedication service.

True to its founding principles, the Sturgeon Point Union Church remains non-denominational. It is managed by a volunteer board, and supported by free-will offerings, while donating to local charities. Visiting ministers and lay speakers lead the services. Being a striking architectural specimen, the church has hosted many weddings over the years. It is increasingly being used as a community centre, providing a venue for concerts, plays, speakers and other public events.

The Coboconk Dam

In the years leading up to the First World War, Fred Peel worked at Grip Ltd., a Toronto design firm that published a satirical magazine Grip. Many members of the Group of Seven met while working for this company, and Fred became a close friend of J.E.H. MacDonald. J.E.H. would become one of Canada’s most famous landscape artists, as would his son Thoreau MacDonald. After these friends left the Grip, Fred Peel managed Coboconk’s Gull River Lumber Company Mill (built 1913) and J.E.H. often stayed at his cottage on the Gull River around 1920.

While visiting Coboconk, J.E.H. MacDonald produced a few nationally renowned pieces including Cattle by the Creek (1918) and River Pastures, Gull River of 1922. Perhaps his most memorable Coboconk painting was Mill at Coboconk. After MacDonald passed away in 1932, Sampson-Matthews Ltd. began producing silkscreen reproductions of notable Canadian paintings, initially for the armed forces. The first silkscreen was produced in 1941, and by the time the project ended in 1963, 117 different images had been produced and distributed across Canada, including the Mill at Coboconk—making this scene an iconic Canadian image.

Mill at Coboconk shows the Coboconk dam, circa 1920, with the bait shack and Simon Plewes’ grist mill on the river bank. Coboconk’s Anglican Church appears in the background—since then Peel deigned a new steeple for it. Much of the commercial activity in Coboconk occurred in close proximity to the dam. On the opposite (west shore), Cronk and Bateman’s sawmill would become a tannery, then the Sunset Dye Factory. The mill that Peel managed was just across the pond to the northwest, where the river bent to northeast on its way to Silver Lake. ...

The New Coboconk Dam

In 1939, the Coboconk dam was replaced with a new concrete barrier just downstream, which continued to be a very active part of the community. For many years, fishing from the dam was popular, as it served as the (unofficial) pedestrian bridge. In those days, when the dam was a centre of community activity, there were no railings on the structure. Today, railings have been added, but pedestrians can no longer cross and many people might not realize that the vista looking across this dam was once a famous piece of Canadiana.

McLaren's Creek Bridge

By the 1960s, offering regular passenger service on the Victoria Railway was no longer financially viable due to declining traffic, then in the following decade regular freight service suffered the same fate. Once regular service was no longer offered, freight was still carried on demand, but when the rail line washed out north of Highland Junction, traffic ceased on the northern end of the railway. Then in 1980, the bridge over McLaren’s Creek burned and it was not worth rebuilding, so commercial traffic ended, though a few recreational users travelled the rails on their own vehicles. It would not be long before the rails were taken up.

Once the iron horse no longer visited Lindsay, it was not clear what would become of the railway allowance. Would it be parcelled off and sold or would it join the rails to trails movement? As the decisions were being made about the Victoria Railway in 1993-1994, other regions were making the same choices. Victoria County had acquired the rights to the corridor, and there was a strong political lobby to parcel off the right of way to adjacent landowners. Given the choice, many people would have preferred to purchase a strip of land running through their property, rather than have it become a recreational corridor. The Somerville and District Snowmobile Association worked to persuade County Council to allow it to become a trail.

Money became a pivotal issue in the debate of whether or not to create a recreational corridor. When it was apparent that the County could profit from selling the rail lands, could Council really spend tax payers’ dollars to fund a recreational corridor? A lot of work was needed to transform the abandoned railway into the rail trail. The cost of rebuilding the McLaren’s Creek Bridge came to symbolize all the expenses that would be incurred in developing the line. It would cost about $100,000, which was a relatively small sum of money compared to other projects that the County was completing at the time. When SADSA received a grant to cover nearly half the cost and produced a cheque for $55,000 for the balance, then the project could go ahead. The destruction of the McLaren’s Creek Bridge had brought an end to the Victoria Railway, then its reconstruction led to the birth of the Victoria Rail Trail.

Today, the McLaren’s Creek bridge has become a very popular place to visit. Being one of the most interesting stops either on the Victoria Rail Trail or from Ken Reid Conservation Area, it seems like there is always someone there appreciating the views of McLaren’s Creek. The area is home to many birds and it is a beautiful place to enjoy the sunset. In its reincarnation, the McLaren’s Creek bridge is appreciated by far more people than it ever was as part of the railway.

Knox Presbyterian Church, Glenarm

For motorists travelling the Glenarm Road, the former Knox Presbyterian Church is one of the most prominent landmarks along the route. Opened on November 26, 1893, it was a magnificent building for a community the size of Glenarm in Victorian times. The population around Glenarm was largely Scottish. In this era, other communities were home to many different denominations. In the Glenarm area, it was different denominations of Presbyterians.

Presbyterianism in nineteenth century Ontario has a complicated political history, with up to three synods operating at any given time—Presbyterianism around Glenarm is similarly a story of unions and separations. The Eldon Church operated in connection with the Church of Scotland (the Established Church), as did Fenelon (Glenarm), until 1869, when it broke away to join the Free Church, along with Kirkfield and Palestine. Woodville-Thorah was part of the Free Church from 1844, which merged with the Successionist Church to form the Presbyterian Church of Canada in 1861. In 1875, another merger formed the Presbyterian Church in Canada, however the Eldon Church did not join this union. In fact, in 1865, members of the Established Church formed a separate congregation in Fenelon Township, just one concession distant from the nearest Free Church. Their chapel was complete by 1867. After Church Union in 1875, Fenelon (Glenarm) and Cambray formed a two-point charge, sharing the cost of a minister. The next year, the congregations of Fenelon-Palestine, Cambray and Islay decided to extend the existing church at Glenarm, which was complete by November. It became known as the Long Church or the White Church. In 1881, they added a manse, then the following year, Cambray separated. In 1883, the Presbytery was renamed ‘Glenarm,’ instead of ‘Fenelon,’ and the congregation was called ‘Knox’ in honour of Scottish Reformation theologian John Knox—a name that was distinctive to the Free Church at the time.

In the nineteenth century, a large proportion of Scottish immigrants spoke Gaelic. To accommodate the congregation, in 1883, Reverend D.M. McDonald preached a service in English, then one in Gaelic, each Sunday morning. Communion was celebrated twice a year (January and July) and lasted five days, from Thursday to Monday. Thursday, “La Trasgaidh” (Fast Day); Friday, “La Rannsaichaidh” (Day of Self-Examination), then at “the Ceisd” elders presented a text that was used to preach the marks of a true Christian; Saturday, “La Ulluchaidh,” (Day of Preparation), members would receive a Communion Token to present at the Communion Service the next day; Sunday, “La Communaidh” (Communion Day); Monday, “La Traingealichd” (Day of Thanksgiving).

For the largely Scottish settlement around Glenarm, the church served as a community centre. For many years, it hosted an annual July Picnic, featuring ball games and tea. In 1891, the congregation began to plan for a new church, which took two years to complete. A basement would be added under the chapel in 1915, as a furnace was installed and the pulpit was rearranged to accommodate choir chairs. In its early years, the church was well attended, and by the early twentieth century it featured a Women’s Missionary Society, Ladies Aid, Sunday School, Mission Band and Young People’s Society. In the early twentieth century, the minister would travel around to homes to hear children answer catechism. Catechism is a series of questions, for which adherents memorize answers (i.e. What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever).

The chapel survived being struck by lightning in 1910, though considerable damage was done. The congregation voted strongly against another Church Union in 1925, as so remained Presbyterian rather than joining the United Church. Hydro was installed in 1937, which was early for the vicinity. The next year it became a two-point charge with Fenelon Falls, which it would remain for the rest of its tenure. In 1948, Maxwell V. Putnam became the resident student minister. He was ordained in 1951, and would go on to become a well-known preacher and moderator of the Presbyterian Church. His successor Walter Jackson was remembered as being a popular minister, particularly with youth. The congregation remained strong through the ministry of William Fairley (1969-1988). With his Scottish brogue, he was a very warm and engaging speaker. He and wife Rita were devoted to caring for his congregation, particularly those who were unwell. The church was never quite the same after he retired.

By the twenty-first century, the days when the Glenarm area was a predominately Scottish settlement had long since passed. When the church was founded, Sunday service was one of the few public social outings that neighbouring farmers could look forward to, as practically everyone attended church. 130 years later, it could not longer be assumed that people would attend church, as families had the freedom to travel and enjoy many forms of recreation that their ancestors could not dream about. For many years, the church struggled to survive, then closed in August 2022. The building was sold and today it is private property, but remains one of the most conspicuous buildings in the area.

The Natural Bridge Behind Fenelon Falls

In the early nineteenth century, Fenelon Falls was a unique landscape, “fringed with dwarf oaks,” in the words of Thomas Need, that stood out from the dense forests that dominated much of the region. Need, who owned a village plot at Bobcaygeon, loved outdoor recreation, and felt that Fenelon Falls was “one of the loveliest scenes in the province.” It was a roaring natural waterfall, surrounded by what aspiring British gentry like Need would have seen as natural parkland. For him it was “a great delight, on the long evenings of the last summer, to sail up the lake, and pass a quiet hour or two at the Falls, after the toils of the day were over.”

But it was more than the ancient oak grove and thundering cascade that made Fenelon Falls a special site. It was home to a curiosity—a natural bridge. Up to the 1830s, it was possible, though not particularly easy, to walk from one side of the river to the other behind the curtain of Fenelon Falls.

Before the canal created Fenelon Falls’ island, and mills or power plants were built on both sides of the river, it was possible to climb down from the heights by the river, carefully walk along the edge of the river, slip behind the curtain of the falls, and step from boulder to boulder, to reach the far shore. Behind the falls, the ledge had been undermined, creating just enough space for someone to pass. Making the journey would require a bit of a scramble up the steep banks on either end, and a willingness to get wet from falling water at either end, but it was possible. It was damp and a little cramped behind the falls, but this journey was also an unforgettable experience.

In the early 1830s, everything changed. Thomas Need led the development of a lock and mill at Bobcaygeon that raised Sturgeon Lake, shortening the descent of Fenelon Falls, and flooding out both the approaches and the boulders behind the curtain of the falls. Once the lake was raised, the water became altogether too deep to simply walk along the shore to slip behind the curtain. At about the same time, James Wallis and Robert Jameson built a mill, which blocked the north access to the falls. Since then, a power plant was also built on the south side of the river.

The bridge behind the falls was more of a curiosity than a practical transportation route. For anyone with a boat, it was probably easier to paddle across the river. But within a few years of its destruction, in 1842, a four-pier bridge afforded convenient passage across the Fenelon River. Before long, practically everyone forgot that Fenelon Falls had once included a natural bridge.

Rosedale Bridge

For generations life in Rosedale has centred around the pleasures of living beside the waterway. By the beginning of the twentieth century, there were a few cottages in the vicinity. The village grew as a tourist community, with multiple service stations, many waterfront lodges, and restaurants catering to the retail trade. Up to 1960, the village was literally the gateway to Balsam Lake, as boats would have to stop at both the locks and the swing bridge. As the canal and Highway 35 both became busier, this often led to lengthy delays on both routes.

In 1962, Highway 35 was rerouted slightly to the east, as the bridge over Rosedale River became a much higher, fixed span—ending the need for boats and automobiles wait as the bridge was cranked open or closed. While this change made things much more convenient for those passing through Rosedale, the business community was never quite the same again. The shops of the main street were no longer on the thoroughfare, and many of them struggled to survive without this regular traffic. A comparable business section was never created on the new Highway 35.

Rosedale’s swing bridge had been a place where visitors and local residents would gather—to talk to the bridge master, fish off the adjacent dock or spend time with the guests at one of the nearby lodges. While it is not a centre of social activity like its predecessor, the new swing bridge still provides a platform to appreciate the beautiful sight of sunset over Grand Island, or watch boats on the river—typically seen from an automobile. It remains the archway for boats passing into Balsam Lake.

Providence Church

In the nineteenth century Kawarthas, just about every neighbourhood had a school and at least one church—two community institutions that were practically universal. There was a social expectation that everyone would attend church, that Sunday would be reserved as the Lord’s Day, and most people abided. With the advent of automobiles and secularism, in the second half of the twentieth century many people chose to drive to town to join larger churches or did not attend at all. Within a generation, almost all of the small neighbourhood churches stopped holding regular services—but not Providence Church. It is one of the last surviving rural churches in the area.

Before they had a chapel to hold Sunday Service, Methodists near Red Rock held meetings at the Red Rock School, where they attracted more adherents than many rural churches in the district. In 1890, the 58-member congregation purchased part of Thomas and Eliza Jane (Wray) Wilson’s farm for $25. The congregation held tea parties as fund raisers to be able to purchase lumber. They hired the Jobling Brothers of Bridgenorth to erect the church, as the neighbours chipped in as best they could to finish it, allowing it to open on November 2. Congregant John Wellington Staples proposed the name: “Wasn’t it providential that we got it built considering all the hardships in the community and the lack of resources!”

Like many rural churches, it became the neighbourhood’s public gathering place, hosting many activities that involved music and food. Some years a band was hired or gramophones were used, ice cream makers or lanterns rented, and fruit and other food items bought from local merchants. By the time of Church Union in 1925, the church was struggling, with only two members attending the final service before it closed the following year. Volunteers continued to teach Sunday School, then in 1938 the Church reopened, joining the Bobcaygeon Pastoral charge.

Once again, Providence United Church hosted many community activities including church suppers and Watchnight Services on New Year’s Eve. In the age of automobiles, the drive shed, which was originally constructed to stable horses during the service, was often used as an improvised dining room. By the 1970s, the church was again struggling to keep up financially. Surviving a fire in 1974 that damaged the southeast corner, six years later the congregation decided to just operate in summer, using guest ministers—a model that has successfully continued to this day. More recently, it has become home to the Providence Road Band.

Today, each service begins by signing the Little Brown Church in the Vale. The lyrics, “No place is so dear to my childhood as the little brown church in the vale,” reflects what is special about the church. As many of the members were growing up, they really looked forward to seeing friends and neighbours as they gathered on Sunday. Throughout their lives, reflecting on scripture has helped shape who they are, as the world has changed around them. Today, it still is dear to their hearts. The old friends and neighbours still enjoy seeing each other at the little buff-brick country church located in the valley near Hawker’s Creek on Verulam Township’s Providence Road.

Fenelon Theatre Marquee

Motion pictures first appeared in Europe in the late nineteenth century, and “talkies” (films with synchronous dialogue) quickly became the norm for Hollywood productions in the late 1920s. The Revue Cinema opened in Toronto in 1912, however, for a few decades, going to see a film was reserved for larger centres. Lindsay’s Academy Theatre began showing silent films around 1918, then talkies in the 1920s. By the 1930s it was primarily functioning as a movie theatre. Smaller communities could improvise to show films on a bedsheet in a community hall.

In 1948, Lou Consky opened the Fenelon Theatre—in a building constructed of bricks, along with concrete blocks that had been handmade by Mark Fell, Joe Gamsby and Milt Perryman. The theatre created an immediate sensation in the village—making it practical to regularly watch films. At that time, many families in the region did not have electrical service in their homes, and televisions were rare, though battery-operated radios were common—farm families had to come to town to get their batteries recharged. Many teenagers would go to Northey’s Restaurant (later J’n B’s) for a soda, then head over to the Fenelon Theatre to watch the latest show. As theatres opened across the country, feature films became international events and movie stars like Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne became household names.

Almost overnight the Fenelon Theatre became a local landmark. At the time, only a minority of villages of that size had a cinema, and it became an attraction that local families looked forward to visiting. When farmers came to town on Saturday night, their kids dreamed of going to the theatre. Prominently placed in town, its “FENELON” marquee announced to many travellers from the north that they had arrived in the village. It was one of the most conspicuous buildings in town.

By the 1960s, most local families had a television and could watch broadcasts any time they wanted. Going to the show lost some of its lustre. In the 1980s, home videos became the norm, and Fenelon Falls struggled to secure new releases in competition with Lindsay and Kinmount’s cinemas. The Fenelon theatre continued to operate into the new millennium, but by then many preferred to watch movies in the comfort of their homes, while digital projection was becoming the norm. The Fenelon Theatre fell into disrepair and after the roof collapsed, the building was demolished in 2016.

On November 9, 2016, as news was spreading about Donald Trump’s first electoral victory, local volunteers were working with demolition company to salvage the Fenelon Theatre Marquee. The theatre used two 35 mm Century Projector Company, model C projectors, which served until the building closed, one was salvaged and is on exhibit at Maryboro Lodge Museum. Steve Gibson donated the marquee to the community, and volunteers raised the funds to ensure that visitors to Fenelon Falls could continue to be welcomed by the sight of a “FENELON” marquee—fronting the canal instead of the main street. On September 20, 2018, the sign was officially lit at the Chamber of Commerce.

Hillcroft

Mossom Boyd was an orphan who came to Bobcaygeon with the clothes he was wearing and the Bible, then found a way to become a multi-millionaire, the ‘Timber King of the Trent’ and proprietor of much of Bobcaygeon. Because of his success, his children and grandchildren had the benefit of a much more affluent upbringing. In 1888-89, as his sons Mossom Martin and W.T.C. were building a new office, they included a classroom in the east wing, hiring Oxford graduate Walter Comber to be private tutor to their children.

Having tutored the Boyd children, Walter Comber then founded a private school on the Fenelon Falls road, at the western edge of the village, called Hill Croft. Artfully constructed of cream and maroon coloured brick between 1908-09, its crest (a coronet above two crossed arrows on a field of purple and gold) was registered in the Imperial College of Heralds. It had a British Columbia cedar shingle roof that lasted over 55 years. Comber operated it as a private, residential, preparatory school for boys aged 8 to 15. The building included bedrooms, a sitting/common room and two classrooms. Though the term ‘residential school’ has taken on a pejorative meaning, in that era, wealthy families would send their children to a residential school. Boys came from as far away as New York, Chicago and St. Louis made the trip to Bobcaygeon to learn from Comber.

Comber’s School closed at Christmas 1918, because there was a lack of coal to heat the building, due to the Great War. Walter moved to St. Catherine’s where he taught at Ridley College until he died in 1929. That same year, his school was repurposed as Bobcaygeon’s public continuation school, which allowed students to continue their education beyond Grade 8. Grade 12 and 13 science and math courses were taught in alternate years, while Latin was a compulsory subject.

Around 1940, Hillcroft had three classrooms containing about forty desks each, plus a science laboratory. Lacking a gymnasium, students stood in the aisles between their desks to do aerobics for physical education, plus outdoor basketball and baseball. Secondary school students from as far away as Red Rock had to find their own way to get to the school—walking, jogging, or bringing horses, no matter the weather conditions. For many years, the roads were not plowed in winter. Students would put oats and hay under the seat of the cutter, and go out to the barn on school property to feed their animals at lunch time.

On January 1, 1951, the Victoria County School Board was founded, and immediately began amalgamating all of the northern secondary schools into Fenelon Falls High School. Hill Croft was again repurposed to accommodate grades 5-8 from the public school from 1953 to 1956, when the new Bobcaygeon Public School on Balaclava Street opened. In 1958, Mrs. Ernest Beatty and Mr. and Mrs. William Lorne Stewart turned it into Hillcroft Hospital (modern spelling), which accommodated 18 beds. After Bobcaygeon’s hospital closed, it became Hillcroft Haven, a long-term care facility. To accommodate residents, the building received additions which have since been removed.

Sturgeon Point’s Upper Wharf

Sturgeon Point was founded as a waterfront community by steamboat captain George Crandell in 1876. He started the Sturgeon Point Hotel, that was conveniently located beside the original community wharf and the sandbar, which was a wonderful place to go swimming in Sturgeon Lake. Before long, Sturgeon Point also developed as a cottage community, populated largely by successful (business) families from Lindsay (like Crandell). For many years, the fastest way to get from Sturgeon Point from Lindsay was by water, rather than road. Sturgeon Point was never served by a railway.

Especially after the Sturgeon Point Hotel burned in 1896 and the lot was subsequently divided for private development, the original steamboat wharf (east of Swananoah) was eclipsed by a newer wharf (the Upper Wharf), located further west on Lake Avenue. When ships arrived at the wharf, carters with horses and wagons would help travellers move their trunks to their cottages. In 1900, a rain shelter was built at the Upper Wharf at a cost of $315.83, then the wharf was rebuilt four years later.

Around 1900, Sturgeon Point was a common stopping point for many different steamers—whether providing regular service, like the Trent Valley Navigation Company’s Esturion or carrying excursions. Sturgeon Point was a popular destination. In the first years of the twentieth century, gasoline launches became common and many cottagers acquired their own boat—the end of the age of steam travel was fast approaching.

Captain Charles (Charlie) Gray and his wife Minnie of Sturgeon Point operated the last steamer to offer regular passenger service on the upper lakes. The Lintonia left Sturgeon Point at 7 am, stopping at Sandy Point, Greenhurst-Thurstonia and Pleasant Point, so that business owners could be in Lindsay for 9 am. The return trip departed at 5:15. The ship also carried freight and mail, and was popular for Sunday School Picnics and Excursions. Minnie did all the baking to look after the passengers on the excursions—for one trip she had to bake 27 pies.

By the 1930s, automobiles and roads were fast improving, so it had become faster to drive from Lindsay to Sturgeon Point than to take the steamer. Motor vehicles had the added advantages of offering the flexibility to go practically anywhere the driver wanted, whenever convenient (except in winter, as snowplowing was not yet common). The Lintonia operated until 1931, when the Upper Wharf’s era as the community’s transportation hub came to an end.

Canal Lake’s Arch Bridge

In the mid nineteenth century, bridges in the Kawartha Lakes region were typically wooden, employing trestles as necessary depending on the span. These wooden bridges sometimes required painstaking filling to reduce their length—moving tons of stone by hand before the advent of earth moving machinery. In the final decades of the century, steel bridges became common and some examples of steel bridges from this era are still standing today.

At the turn of the century, concrete was a new building product and few local builders were familiar with its use. In nineteenth century Ontario, it was a challenging material to work with—to mix concrete successfully, clean water, pure aggregates and high quality cement (all ingredients that were hard to come by) needed to be mixed in precise proportions. Trent Waterway engineer R.B. Rogers was a pioneer in concrete construction, creating a laboratory in the basement of his Trent Canal office to experiment with different mixes, to maximize the strength, durability, and water resistance of concrete. Construction began on the Otonabee Lock, his first concrete lock, in 1896, followed by the Peterborough Lift Lock, which remains the highest lift lock in the world. To provide the materials for these projects, a local concrete industry was born.

When work began on connecting Balsam Lake with Lake Simcoe, Rogers commissioned another monumental lift lock at Kirkfield. His plans for this section included creating two artificial lakes—Canal Lake and Mitchell Lake, both of which involved digging a canal through a forest, before flooding it. On Canal Lake it was then necessary to bridge the newly created canal. Even though the reputable Dominion Bridge Company of Montreal helped build the Kirkfield Lift Lock, a concrete bridge was chosen, but designed to look like a traditional stone bridge, with abutments on both shores. It was even detailed to give the appearance of voussoir stones over the archway, with coursed stonework on either side—at first glance many observers might mistake it for traditional masonry. When it was completed in 1905, it became the first reinforced concrete bridge in Canada.

The Canal Lake Arch Bridge was designed based on Austrian Engineer Josef Melan’s System. Instead of using iron bars to reinforce concrete, he incorporated a rigid iron truss into the structure. In 1898, he had built the longest reinforced concrete bridge in the world at Steyr, Austria at 42.4 metres. The Canal Lake Bridge does not take advantage of this principle to create a shallow arch, rather its opening is almost a 30 foot semi-circle, hence its nickname “the Hole in the Wall Bridge.” It is 202 feet long and 16 feet wide.

When it was first completed, the bridge presented an unusual appearance. The drowned forests were not cleared until after the opening of the Kirkfield Lift Lock in 1907—so this marvel of engineering would have initially been surrounded by a large, dying, flooded forest. Once the trees were cleared and the lake naturalized, the bridge became a much appreciated architectural feature, one of the many interesting sights along the course of the Trent-Severn Waterway. In 1988, it was designated a National Historic Site.

In 2008 Bruce Stanton, Member of Parliament for Simcoe North unveiled a plaque on the site, but the bridge was beginning to show its age. The City of Kawartha Lakes closed it on April 16, 2018 so GMP Contracting could refurbish the bridge, replacing the concrete deck, curbs and walls. Completed in March 2019, the old concrete bridge, designed for horse traffic, is once again carrying horseless carriages. Born in the age of horses it is narrow for motor cars, but that it just one of its many charming features.

Black’s Rock

In the nineteenth century, the Government of Upper Canada/Canada West/Ontario assumed that practically all land would become farmland. Though agricultural immigration proceeded relatively quickly in townships close to Lake Ontario, it stalled at the fringe of the Canadian Shield. The Bobcaygeon Road was the first colonization road intended to open up this country, reaching the Burnt River in 1858—a site that would become Kinmount.

As the Crown was trying to encourage immigration, about twenty veterans and their families were given free grants along the road. Generally, these soldiers had survived at least 30 years in the British Army, so they were typically over the age of 50. Sergeant Major John Black was among these immigrants, settling just north of Kinmount. He held the highest rank of any non-commissioned officer—it would have been unusual for more senior officers to take up free forested lots north of Kinmount. Few of these soldiers lasted long, but the Black family was an exception, and they would become the namesake of the prominent granite outcropping on their property.

The Victoria Railway was completed to Haliburton in 1878, skirting the Burnt River much of the way. Just north of Kinmount, Black’s Rock dropped precipitously to the water, which was initially overcome by building along the shore, but since runoff from the heights above caused the line to ice, a rock cut was needed. Looking carefully at the face of Black’s Rock, evidence of the blasting can still be seen, and some of the boulders removed now sit on riverbank. Black’s Rock became one of the attractions on the Victoria Railway, promoted with postcards in the twentieth century.

Having a rail connection made it feasible for Fenelon Falls’ Henry Greene and John A. Ellis to build a large sawmill just north of the landmark on the Burnt River in the 1880s on Lot A-3. In that era of river driving, a large proportion of the district’s sawlogs floated down the Burnt River—so it was a convenient location. After the mill closed, the lot became an asparagus farm, and has since become a subdivision.

In the late 1970s, CN Rail decided to close the northern section of the Victoria Railway, citing a washout at Black’s Rock. Local rumours circulated that this was simply an excuse. It was the end of the line for railways, as passenger service had long since stopped and the Victoria Railway was losing money on freight. In the 1990s, it would be reborn as the Victoria Rail Trail. Black’s Rock remains a beautiful site to stop and see the Burnt River, while appreciating the massive stone and the conifers that it supports.

Cameron Orange Hall

In 1690, a war was raging between Prince William of Orange (Holland) and James II, whom he had deposed as King of England. James was both William’s uncle (by James’ older sister Mary) and father-in-law (by James’ daughter, also named Mary). The Protestant William defeated the Catholic James at the Battle of the Boyne, near Drogheda, Ireland, on July 12, 1690, ensuring that the English Crown would remain Protestant. A century later, the Orange Order was created in Ulster, Ireland as a fraternal organization that was loyal to the British monarchy, Protestant, and revered the traditions of Great Britain. It was at the centre of the controversies between Catholic and Protestant rivals in Ireland.

By the early nineteenth century, the Orange Order was active in British North America, and became popular throughout Ontario—it was not just for Irish Protestants. The largest event of the year was the celebration of the Protestant victory of 1690, even some Catholics took part in the celebrations—which revelled in the glory of the British Empire. For the rest of the year, the Orange Order functioned as a community betterment organization.

In 1854, Cameron was a small crossroads settlement when the Orange Lodge was organized, initially operating out of Joseph McNabb’s home on Lot 9, Concession 6 of Fenelon Township. For the first few years, the organization met in members homes and the community’s schoolhouse until an Orange Hall was built on the south east corner where the 6th Concession meets Highway 35 (just south of the General Store). It was used for lodge ceremonies and social gatherings—in practicality, it was the community hall.

In 1923, the lodge created a building fund to erect a new and larger hall. Construction began on February 28, 1928 and it was dedicated on July 3, 1929. The organization took on a mortgage to finance the project, which it managed to pay off through donations, fowl suppers and fundraising entertainment by 1948. It was upgraded with electrical service in 1932—before many neighbouring farms had this convenience. It received an oil furnace in 1955, then washrooms were installed and the kitchen upgraded four years later. It hosted the regional July 12 parades in 1932, 1937 and 1948. After the Cambray Orange Hall burned in 1969, Fenelon Falls and Cambray’s organizations amalgamated into Cameron’s.
Over the years, the Orange Order held numerous fundraisers for charitable causes, including supporting local residents who had lost their homes to fire. The Orange Hall hosted many community events including musical and dramatic presentations, private celebrations like birthdays and anniversaries, euchre games, dances, and Halloween Parties. But as the twentieth century wore on, families started to drive to larger centres to attend social events, as July 12 parades were becoming an increasingly distant memory. The glory of the British Empire and the importance of the Protestant Succession were no longer values that brought people together in an age of decolonization and secularism. By the early twenty-first century, it had fallen into disuse, and today it is privately owned.

Fenelon Falls Lock

The project to build the Trent-Severn Waterway began in the 1830s with a survey and some of the least costly improvements. By the 1880s the financial resources and political will was in place to complete some more costly projects. During the 1878 election campaign, John A. Macdonald raised the possibility of further work on the waterway. Then just before the 1882 election was called, Tom Rubidge was hired to survey Burleigh Falls, Buckhorn and Fenelon Falls—the Prime Minister was clever enough to pick up local seats in two elections for the same spending commitment.

Alexander Manning of Toronto and his American brother-in-law Angus McDonald were the winning bidders on the Fenelon Falls lock contract, at $105,701. Two locks were needed to overcome the 30-foot difference between Cameron and Sturgeon Lakes. The canal was to be a third of a mile long, 60 feet wide and 12 feet deep—deeper where the locks were located. The most laborious part of the job was excavating through rock. Traditionally, black powder had been used as an explosive, but in 1867, Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel patented dynamite, which he had devised as a way to stabilize nitroglycerin to make it safe and portable as a commercial explosive, complete with a blasting cap, to allow it to be safely detonated from a distance. McDonald and his workers gave the new explosive a trial, at first using it like it was black powder, which caused some massive explosions as they came to appreciate how much more powerful it was. It was literally raining rocks in the village, but no one was killed or seriously injured by dynamite, though there were otherwise accidents on the site. Before long, the construction crew learned how to handle dynamite safely.

The lock was completed in 1887, but it was not functional until a ridge was removed from the Fenelon River near the entrance to Cameron Lake and a swing railway bridge replaced the fixed span. The federal government and Midland Railway litigated over who was responsible for making this improvement—ultimately the court decided it was the government. A.W. Parkin’s Water Witch became the first boat to pass through the locks on May 12, 1894. The Anglo Saxon had rotted out waiting for the lock to finally be completed, so it was scuttled near the mouth of the river in Cameron Lake.

Prior to the advent of the automobile, the railway and the canal were the primary means of long-distance transport to or from the village. A bridge master and a lock master were required to swing the railway bridge and operate the canal—both opened manually. The main street of Fenelon Falls crossed directly over the locks, necessitating a second swing bridge. The original lock had stone walls and wooden lock gates, which required constant maintenance.

By 1960, the traffic through the canal was primarily recreational boaters and practically everyone used an automobile to get from Point A to Point B. While it was a tourist attraction to watch boats pass through the locks (while enjoying ice cream from the Fenelon Dairy), having to swing the bridge for boats was a serious inconvenience for motorists, especially in summer as traffic would back up. At the same time, it would be a lot easier to maintain and operate a single, automated concrete lock with steel gates. W.G. Jackett and Sons excavated to allow the construction of a new lock which opened in 1963. Two years later, a fixed concrete span replaced the swing bridge, which was no longer necessary, after the two-tier lock was replaced with a single lift, located upstream from the bridge.

The Beehive - Eganridge Resort

In 1839, James Hartley Dunsford, a rector, vicar and justice of the peace from Gloucester, England arrived with his children James Wicks, Hartley, Augusta-Agnes, Lydia, Caroline, George and Martin to settle on the north shore of Sturgeon Lake between Fenelon Falls and Bobcaygeon. In the 1830s, a large proportion of the immigrants coming to this area were aspiring young gentlemen—typically bachelors, who were younger sons from wealthy families. They would not inherit the family fortune back home and were looking for a way to live as gentlemen in the new continent. In this social circle, the Dunsfords were unusual, because they emigrated as a family—bringing with them young ladies.

The Dunsfords named their 720-acre estate the Beehive, building what was a grand log house for its time and place. Ordinary folk lived in a log shanty. The house was symmetric, entered through a verandah into a central hallway, with a staircase ascending to the second floor. On the left was a bedroom and dining room, with kitchen and library on the right. Upstairs there were four bedrooms. In the 1830s, even for a wealthy family like the Dunsfords, children would not expect to have their own room.

Being backwoods gentry always had a degree of ridiculousness to it—for instance, one gentleman pretentiously ate with silver cutlery on a table formed of a door and two barrels, before enjoying the evening with cigars, snuff and fine whiskey. The Dunsfords were perhaps more conspicuous than the rest, bringing with them a piano, harp, carriage and driver. Neighbour Anne Langton remarked, “I hope that they do not forget to bring a good road too.” They even imported roses for their gardens.

The aspiring genteel farmers tended to hire labourers to do much of the farm work for them. Within a few years, it became apparent that managing a farm would not be profitable in Canada as it was in Britain. One by one, the gentry found other occupations. Because they had education, most of the young men became professionals or politicians. James Wicks became a politician; George and Martin became lawyers; and Hartley was a banker and the Land Registrar of Victoria County. Lydia married John Langton (Anne’s brother—Canada’s first Auditor General), Augusta Agnes married neighbour Henry Thomas Wickham, while Caroline married Mossom Boyd (Timber King of Bobcaygeon), after her first fiancée Morgan Jones drowned while crossing Sturgeon Lake to visit her. James Wicks briefly partnered with his brothers-in-law Mossom Boyd and John Langton in the lumber business, and was operating a shingle mill on Hawker’s Creek near the Beehive (Concession VI Verulam) that was said to cut 2,000,000 shingles in 1860. But even he would move on to pursue his political career. The young coachman who emigrated with the family, George Bick, stayed in the community, becoming a future Reeve, who was instrumental in the construction of the Methodist Church and his descendants remain in the area to this day.

The Beehive would become a farm with one of the cathedral timber-framed barns that were common in the region. In the twentieth century, the materials were available to build much more comfortable homes and by 1950 the Beehive had fallen into despair and was scarcely recognizable, by then it was covered with crumbling plaster—though some of its owners like Colonel Plummer and Edgar Watt had spent a lot of money on upkeep. By the 1950s, work was underway to turn the lands surrounding the old log home into a subdivision, the Beehive Estates.

In 1957, Mavis Fuller and Len Cary of Bobcaygeon bought the Beehive and converted it into an inn. They intended that the resort would bring together the luxuries of that era, with the feel of a pioneer estate. By 1967, it featured a nine-hole golf course, with the old log barn converted into a modern club house—while featuring the old stone foundation and axe-hewn beams. Unfortunately, in 1966, the business partners’ other property (Bobcaygeon’s Rockland House) burned, with little insurance. The original photograph dates from this era.

In 1969, Allan Stanley retired from the Philadelphia Flyers. A nine-time All-Star and future Hockey Hall of Famer, this rock-solid defenseman played alongside Tim Horton when the Toronto Maple Leafs last won the Stanley Cup in 1967—one of his four championships. Allan and his wife Barbara, bought the Beehive, becoming notable local personalities as they toured around town in a two-seat roadster convertible. At the time, Fenelon Falls was home to the Byrnell Manor Hockey Camp, and Allan Stanley would organize his own hockey camp, recruiting professional hockey players to serve as instructors, including Rick MacLeish, Bobby Baun, Fred Stanfield and Dick Duff. The boys at camp stayed in one of six cabins, named after each of the original six NHL franchises. They were bussed into to town to play hockey at the arena or visit the theatre.

In 1988, John and Patty Egan, who made a career of developing well-known hospitality properties, bought the Beehive and renamed it Eganridge Inn and Country Club. They renovated the old log home, restoring the exterior and creating six large rooms inside—two that featured fireplaces. Offering high-quality dinners, swimming, tennis and golf, they marketed Eganridge as, “unsurpassed comfort and indulgence in a country setting… truly ‘AN ESTATE OF MIND.’”

The Beehive or Eganridge has a long history of being a high-class place to enjoy life by Sturgeon Lake. Since its conversion to an inn, many locals were married there, as its restaurant also maintained a great reputation. The old barn has been converted into a restaurant, and in 2001 was expanded to include a spa, ballroom, and hotel suites overlooking Sturgeon Lake. Since about 2008, Eganridge has been operated by the Windsor Arms Hotel Group. As a resort catering to weddings, corporate retreats and couples’ getaways, it in many ways still reflects the beautiful, genteel estate that the Dunsford Family built on the north shore of Sturgeon Lake in 1839.

Kawartha Dairy

In the 1930s, most villages had a dairy that processed and delivered milk daily—some people had an ice box, but many families got by without any refrigeration. Most cream was used to make butter—typically at a creamery like George and Suzie Lee’s on Bolton Street (now the site of Canada Post). To the extent that ice cream was made, it was often prepared in small batches, either at home or a restaurant—having a freezer at home would be unusual indeed. Because few people had a way to keep milk cool, dairies produced just enough milk for their daily circuit. Bobcaygeon was home to three dairies owned by the Murphy (now Kawartha Settlers Village), Coulter and Johnson families.

In the spring of 1936, Jack Crowe took a job working at the Oshawa Dairy (later Beatrice/Lactalis), where he learned how to operate a dairy. He earned $2.00 per day and worked seven days a week. He had married Ila Anderson the previous November. Jack would inspect the bottles by day and train horses at night. It was certainly long days, but as Ila later observed “it was the depression and it was steady work.” In 1937, they moved back to Bobcaygeon as they purchased the Johnson Dairy, which had been operating for about six years. His days of working seven days a week in the dairy business were just beginning.

Initially, Kawartha Dairy was a small white frame building that only served part of the village of Bobcaygeon. It consisted of three rooms: A cold storage room cooled with ice that was cut from the lake in winter, and stored in an ice house; a washing room where all the glass milk bottles were cleaned by hand before being refilled with milk, with a paper cap; and a processing room. A boiler heated the facility and all the machinery was powered by a steam engine, because electricity was not yet available. Milk was picked up at two farms in 80 lb stainless steel milk cans by horse and sleigh/wagon. Unfortunately, in 1938, Jack broke his leg while training a horse, and was laid up in bed all winter, while Ila and one employee found a way to pick up the milk, process it, bottle it and deliver it. Bobcaygeon residents would long remember Ila delivering milk by horse and sleigh/wagon or truck, with a couple of kids crawling on and off her lap as she drove.

Over the years the business slowly expanded. Because people got sick from drinking raw milk, pasteurization became a requirement, which closed many small dairies. Kawartha Dairy had pasteurized their milk since they opened, but Murphy’s sold raw milk. As Murphy chose not to invest in this new equipment, Kawartha Dairy bought out their business, which gave it the entire Bobcaygeon market. At the time, there were also dairies in Fenelon and Lindsay. After the Second World War, people had far more time and income for recreation. “Deep freezes” were becoming a common household appliance, as just about every home had electricity. Jack took a course on ice cream making at Guelph’s Ontario Agricultural College. In 1955 to 1956, he began producing ice cream, and the company still uses his recipe today. Around 1960, the company started using tanker trucks to pick up milk—up to that point, milk cans were still in use.

Jack and Ila’s son Don and daughter-in-law Opal Crowe opened the Minden store on July 1, 1961. It retailed Kawartha Dairy products, and was used as a warehouse to deliver to the surrounding area. Initially, it was a very plain store, with just a few planks laid across milk cases as a checkout counter. The opening featured free ice cream cones, and Opal later recalled “the yard was full of cars. Everyone wanted free ice cream.” Seeing a line up for ice cream at the Minden Kawartha Dairy would become a familiar sight.

In September 1975, a fire destroyed a shed behind Kawartha Dairy that housed company vehicles. As they rebuilt after the fire, the Crowe family significantly expanded the plant, installing new equipment. In 1984, the Bobcaygeon location received a new storefront. In 1986, they bought a dairy in Bancroft, which became a depot, similar to Minden, as the Bobcaygeon plant again expanded. Shortly afterward, the management of the company passed to the second generation, after Jack and Ila had worked side by side operating the dairy for 50 years. The company added the Lindsay Dairy Barn in 1994. In 1999, Kawartha Dairy introduced a new logo and redesigned its packaging. By then, much of the milk came from fourteen local dairy farms, as the company was processing about 60,000 litres of milk a day. Their market had reached Alliston, Bracebridge and North Toronto.

By the new millennium, times had certainly changed. When it started in 1937, Kawartha Dairy primarily produced milk and cream for domestic use. Back then ice cream was literally iced cream. As frozen dairy desserts that are not really ice cream proliferate, Kawartha Dairy ice cream—still made with their original recipe—has become one of Ontario’s favourite premium brands and is now sells as far away as British Columbia. Today there are many more flavours, but on a summer evening people still congregate in front of Kawartha Dairy to enjoy an ice cream cone—happy memories that thousands of people share.

Boyd Office - Museum

Mossom Boyd emigrated as an orphan in 1834 to visit friend John Darcus who had settled west of Bobcaygeon on the north shore of Sturgeon Lake. Darcus persuaded him to stay, and Boyd took up a farm nearby. His friend soon moved on, and Boyd accepted a job working for the miller, Thomas Need, who owned the nascent village of Bobcaygeon. As Need also moved on to other ventures, Boyd was left to manage the grist and sawmills. Other businessmen offered to buy the property, but Need thought it should be saved for the “one who has borne the labour & heat of the day.” Eventually—on September 2, 1869, more than thirty years after Need had first entrusted him with the mills—Boyd completed the purchase of Need’s interest. By the time he passed away in 1883, he had risen to be one of the wealthiest and best-known businessmen in Canada.

Mossom Boyd was an ambitious, hard-driving man. He was not afraid to get his hands dirty, and personally went on log drives as they made their way town the Trent Watershed. His sons grew up in very different circumstances, built on their father’s hard work. Having come of age as members of Canada’s business elite, keeping up appearances was a necessity. They lived in a mansion, behind stone walls, with servants (it was necessary to host many visiting business associates); travelled in yachts or fine carriages; wore fine clothes, smoked imported cigars, and hired private tutors for their children. Mossom’s record keeping had been relatively scant, but his sons were trained in business, and meticulously filed their paperwork, even unsolicited business correspondence (what we would today call junk mail, but in the nineteenth century it was hand written). After Mossom died, his sons decided that instead of conducting the business out of the Big House, they needed an office, which opened on the other side of William Street in 1889.

The Boyds were anglophiles, and their office was an English Cottage Style design. A one-storey tall building, facing the canal, with additional space in the rear, it had tall eyebrow windows set into the roof line that opened with brass levers and locks. Similarly, the interior doors were tall and wide, with brass hardware. In that era, many visitors coming to Bobcaygeon from a distance took a steamship, and the entrance to the building was conveniently located across the street from the village’s lower wharf. Boyd’s grist mill still stood beside the canal, and the sawmill had operated there before being superseded by the larger Little Bob Mill. It was right at the heart of Bobcaygeon.

From the canal, visitors would walk across the road, through a gateway in a stone wall, into the main entrance. As they came in, they saw a long row of cabinets to waist height and a wide cabinet with narrow drawers that held maps relating to the business ventures (their extensive land holdings, timber limits, etc.) They had a couple more banks of drawers, a slant top desk with narrow drawers and a further group of drawers. The company clerk sat on a tall stool behind the desk where he kept the records. A large walk-in vault with double steel doors and a large combination dial was built into the rear wall directly behind the cabinets.

To the right of this room, a fine wooden door led into Mossom Martin (Mossie) Boyd’s office. This is a large space with a fireplace and a large window overlooking the Canal. There are bookshelves on the outside walls, similar to the bookshelves in the front room. Years later, after Sheila Boyd donated the building to house a permanent library, an extension was built on to this office and used by the Township of Verulam, now the Chamber of Commerce.

Another hallway off the main room led down two steps into a wood storage room—needed to feed the fireplaces that heated the building. This storeroom also kept other supplies, including some destined for lumber camps. A large steel vault stood in one corner, and a door led outside to the rear of the building. A staircase at the front of the room led up to the attic, where the records of the company were kept in two rooms. The only light came from a window in each room, built as dormers into the roof.

W.T.C. (Willie) Boyd’s office was on the left side of the main room. Willie operated the Trent Valley Navigation Company, and served as the Reeve of Bobcaygeon. Initially, the Boyd family’s steamships were primarily used to tow logs to the mill and lumber to market (typically via the railway at Lindsay), but by the 1890s, it offered an integrated network to travellers. Willie helped oversee construction of the Lindsay, Bobcaygeon and Pontypool Railway, which ironically was completed just as the sawmill was winding down, and would take much of the traffic from the Trent Valley Navigation Company. But it was a great convenience for Bobcaygeon residents and businessmen. Willie booked passengers and goods for the railway, as he did for the steamship company.

Passing through Willie’s office, the front room of the building served as the Boyd children’s private schoolroom. Mossie travelled to Oxford, where he found an appropriate teacher, Walter Comber, and invited him to emigrate to teach the brothers’ children. The children had a beautiful schoolroom, with pine bookcases, from floor to ceiling and a large fireplace. The next room to the south had a vaulted ceiling and large windows. There were hooks on top of the bookshelves, that Willie used to roll up maps. Four large iron hooks on the ceiling supported ropes that the children could shinny up if the weather would make playing outside unpleasant. Its fireplace was back-to-back with the one in the front room.

Mossie’s daughter Sheila donated the building to become the library (east wing), alongside the offices for Bobcaygeon (centre) and Verulam (west wing) in 1953. She commissioned an addition to house a non-fiction room, and a large room below that was art gallery, where she would teach. John Grant built the addition in 1967, which was carefully designed to resemble the old building. The lumber office had been built before the advent of electricity and indoor plumbing, so Sheila ensured that there was a washroom built onto the art room—the only one in the building.

By the time the office was built in 1889, the Boyd family’s ventures had extended well beyond Bobcaygeon. At the same time, the days of Boyd’s Bobcaygeon mill were numbered—this was the primary source of profit for the company. When Mossom Boyd had started out, there were a great many old growth trees that stood in the way of agricultural development. By the 1890s, timber limits had become quite valuable and rather than spending a fortune on standing timber at the far reaches of the Trent Watershed, or even in the Muskoka Watershed, Mossie Boyd decided to shift production to Cowichan, on Vancouver Island. The Boyds also had an 8,000 acre stock farm near Prince Albert Saskatchewan, and owned lands in the Northwest Territories. Mossie was busy breeding the horns off Hereford cattle and trying to cross cattle with bison to boost beef production—he would be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame for his efforts. But their Bobcaygeon ventures were coming to an end.

The last load of lumber left the Little Bob Mill in 1906. From then on, the Trent Valley Navigation Company never again turned a profit and relinquished its charter in 1915. Mossie passed away in 1914, followed by Willie five years later. For generations their office, homes and the massive barn south of town stood as Bobcaygeon landmarks. Today, the office and barn remain as reminders of the era when one of Canada’s most notable Bobcaygeon business ventures was based in Bobcaygeon. The Big House burned in 1994, and its stone walls were crumbling. Dirk Van Oudenaren and Bernie Gehmair relocated an archway from the home, which now stands in front of the main entrance to the Boyd Heritage Museum, welcoming visitors to learn about the Boyd Family by walking up the steps that once greeted steamship visitors to Bobcaygeon.

The Boyd Barn

Canadian Birthplace of the Polled Hereford & Home to Many Buffalo Adventures

Mossom Boyd was one of the rare Timber Barons whose wealth and success was real—he went from being an orphan who came over with the clothes he was wearing and the Bible, to a multi-millionaire in an era when “A Dollar a Day” was a workin’ man’s wage.

His son, Mossom M. (Mossie) Boyd grew up with the benefits of an education, plus his father’s fantastic wealth, and also conveniently owned Bobcaygeon. While his father had been one of the hardest-working and hardest-driving men ever to live in the Kawarthas, Mossie took the time for gentlemanly pursuits.

In the nineteenth century, improving agriculture was a social cause that was almost universally esteemed. In that era, most people had some first-hand experience of what it meant to go hungry, and most every family faced eternal, monotonous manual labour just trying to get by on the farm—clearing land with ox and axe, mowing hay by hand, processing almost all the food they would eat. Anyone who figured out a way to improve agricultural yields or make farm life less tedious was instantly a hero. Many gentlemen dabbled in improving agriculture. Mossie Boyd had the time and money to take it to another level. Today we take for granted the technological advances that were painstakingly achieved over generations.

Mossie figured that if he could cross a Buffalo with a domestic cow, to make an animal that would have the flesh of a cow but the size and shoulders of a buffalo, he could advance beef farming more in a few years than could be accomplished in generations of selective breeding. He acquired a buffalo bull named Napoleon Bonaparte from California in 1893 and crossed it to Hereford and Angus cows.

The animals were pastured on Big (aka Boyd or Chiminis) Island in Pigeon Lake… but buffalo can swim quite well. Before long the herd was romping all over the county (they made it at least as far as Viamede Resort on Stoney Lake). The barn has a cupola so Boyd’s workers could try to keep an eye on the animals and herd them back to island—including chasing them through the water with steamboats.

Though he produced crosses that could reproduce, he did not achieve a marketable animal in his lifetime, and moved on to producing the Polled Hereford. By breeding the horns off these cows, they would devote more of their energy to producing flesh, and would also be easier to handle. He successfully produced the polled Hereford by breeding freak polled Herefords he bought in Iowa with Angus cows (a breed that already did not have horns). Polled Herefords soon became the most popular breed of cattle in Canada. Though some local farmers grumble that when he bred the horns off the cows, he also bred off their hind end.

Highlands Cinemas

As Keith Stata was growing up in Kinmount in the 1960s, film was a relatively new media to the area. Though Kinmount did not have a theatre—there were cinemas in Lindsay, Fenelon Falls and Kinmount—kids from the region loved to go to the cinema, in an era when televisions were not yet common. Keith dreamed of moving to Hollywood and becoming a film producer. While attending Fenelon Falls District High School (later Secondary School) he was a founder of the film club, where he and his friends shot their own motion pictures. Though his dreams of making it big in Hollywood would not come true, he would devote his life to sharing his love of film with others.

As a young man, Keith Stata operated a construction business, while showing films in his family hope. After trying the Community Centre and Anglican Church as venues, his family welcomed visitors to their basement to watch movies, with a bed on the floor as seating. Popcorn was served out of the kitchen, as visitors chatted with his mother on their way out of the ‘theatre.’ In 1975, Keith took the leap of faith, beginning work on a purpose-built cinema attached to his home. By 1996, he completed five, each with their own unique design. Who would have believed that Kinmount, a village of 300 people could support a five-screen cinema with 550 seats!?

Called “the most UNIQUE multiplex in the world,” Keith built Highlands Cinemas in an era when theatres were closing across North America. As theatres were shutting down in larger centres, Keith collected the projectors, film reels and parts from more than 450 theatres. He used all of these artifacts to build a theatre and museum that is more of an attraction than the films it shows. Located in the woods north of town, it’s not uncommon for visitors to encounter wildlife as they visit. As of 2025, Highlands Cinemas cares for 58 abandoned cats.

In 2024, Highlands Cinemas showed a very special documentary. Matt Finlin’s The Movie Man tells the history of this theatre and the story of how Keith Stata managed to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic. As he was starting out, many film distributors were put off by this unconventional cinema, but in an era when the movie industry as a whole is in peril, critics suggest The Movie Man is the kind of story that might help revive interest. If you are interested in seeing The Movie Man or any other motion picture, there is no more interesting place to see it than Highlands Cinemas.

Lindsay’s Wharf

In the early nineteenth century, as large scale European immigration to the Kawartha Lakes region was starting, railways were a new invention and were not common. For generations, rivers and canals had constituted some of the best transportation routes, particularly for freight in Britain. As thousands of settlers moved to Upper Canada, many expected waterways would be a principal mode of transportation in Canada, as they had been in Britain. Work commenced on what would become the Trent-Severn Waterway in 1833, but it was not completed until 1920. Even without the through waterway completed, much local commerce passed through Lindsay. One ancient route was overland from Whitby to Lake Scugog, then by water to the rapid (later lock) at Lindsay. By the mid nineteenth century, much of the district commerce passed through Lindsay’s wharves.

In 1857, the Port Hope, Lindsay and Beaverton Railway was completed to Lindsay (it did not reach Beaverton until 1871), which preceded Peterborough having a stable rail connection. It was not until the 1870s that any of the communities to the north would be connected by railway. In the intervening years, much of the traffic (passengers or freight) coming to or leaving the district passed through Lindsay’s wharf, establishing it as a transportation hub of the region. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Lindsay entrepreneur George Crandell created an integrated steamship network that served the region, making long-distance transportation convenient.

In the nineteenth century, Lindsay’s riverfront was a centre of industrial activity, particularly in the vicinity of the wharves and lock. By 1831, William Purdy had saw and grist mills at Lindsay and industrial activity diversified over the course of the century. As railway networks continued to develop, many of these waterfront enterprises were served by one of the railway lines. Bobcaygeon did not have a railway connection until 1904, so much of the lumber sawn at Mossom Boyd’s mills had to be loaded on to scows to be towed to Lindsay—similar with farm produce for export.

Throughout the nineteenth century, Lindsay’s wharves continued as a transportation hub. By the early twentieth century, steamships were in decline as a mode of transportation, as both Crandell’s company and the Boyd family’s Trent Valley Navigation Company faded into history. With the advent of automobiles and motor boats, fewer people would travel on steamers, though the experience of going on an excursion remained popular up to the 1930s. Sturgeon Point had been founded as a cottage community, largely populated by prominent Lindsay families. Since the trip was much shorter by water, this would be the last route served by regular steamship service, lasting until Charles Gray, captain of the Lintonia, retired in 1931. In the years that have passed since, what was once a focal point or industry and transportation has become largely greenspace and residential.

Maryboro Lodge

In the 1830s, Cameron and Sturgeon Lakes were home to a conspicuously large number of aspiring young gentlemen (but not nearly so many young ladies). For a time, there was literally more lords than labourers. Typically younger sons who would not inherit the family fortune back home, they hoped that by moving to the backwoods of Upper Canada that they could achieve a status that they were too poor to enjoy back home. Land speculation was a common venture for these young men, and no local enterprise snapped up more cheap land than Robert Jameson and James Wallis. They owned Fenelon Falls, Rosedale, many surrounding farm lots, plus lots in the towns of Lindsay and Peterborough, as well as Whitby harbour (anticipating traffic from the region to head south).

As the village’s owner, James Wallis could choose any site he wished to build his home. He selected a lot in the Oak Grove, with a view of Cameron Lake and the Fenelon River. His family owned the Maryborough estate in Cork, Ireland, which was the namesake for his new residence in the woods. Raised by a landed family, he was conscious that his dwelling was not a proper country house, hence the name Maryboro Lodge. Being a bachelor at the time it was completed, the house included two dancing parlours, a dining room, and bedrooms, but no kitchen. It was just what was needed to entertain friends in the backwoods.

Wallis also owned the village’s sawmills and one of the common dimensions being cut was deals—3x9 inches—which were typically exported to Britain. This first floor of Maryboro Lodge was made of deals stacked on their narrow side—being an unusual form of construction. In 1840, a summer kitchen and servant’s quarters was added with a separate staircase. The master bedroom featured a dressing room—where the lady of the house could be dressed. Originally, the building faced Wallis’ private park (now Oak Street) and the falls. The two parlours faced the river. As the village grew up around the building, traffic patterns reversed and today most visitors approach the building from what was originally its back side.

Jameson and Wallis struggled to find customers who would purchase land from them at a profit—there was no shortage of land at the time. Both moved on to other ventures, Wallis became a steamboat captain and gentleman farmer at Peterborough. His land ventures were insolvent, but he was saved from personal embarrassment by an inheritance. Several different families lived at Maryboro Lodge in the late nineteenth century, as the oak grove remained a beautiful site for a church picnic.

In 1913, Belle, Tillie and Kate Abbott transformed Maryboro Lodge into a boarding house and tourist lodge. These sisters never had running water, but nonetheless prepared meals for their guests. Many guests fondly remembered having tea with the Misses Abbotts (as they were called, each being Miss Abbott) on their verandah. In this era, Maryboro Lodge had a tennis court, and was situated immediately beside the railway. Across the tracks was an informal village campground. It was customary to drive an automobile into the park and set up camp.

When the time came for Belle and Tillie Abbott to move to a nursing home, their nephew Milburn Kelly helped to ensure that Maryboro Lodge would be preserved for the community. The Fenelon Falls Historical Society transformed this oldest building in the area into a local history museum. Still operated by volunteers more than six decades later, this old house has become a place of learning and discovery, while carrying on age-old traditions like afternoon tea.

Fenelon Falls’ Swing Bridge

When the Victoria Railway was constructed in the mid-1870s, Fenelon Falls was still a waterfall with a cascade located above it. A mill dam had been constructed across the river to direct water to saw and grist mills beside the falls that had commenced work in the 1830s, but there was no boat traffic on the river. Before the railway was constructed, much of the traffic to and from Fenelon Falls came by water. There was a lower wharf located just below the falls on the north shore, and another wharf on Cameron Lake. In the 1880s, there was a foundry and pulp mill on the shore of the lake, around where Garnet Graham Park is located today. So, as the railway was first built, it was a fixed bridge spanning the river at the mouth of Cameron Lake.

After a generation of political advocacy to construct the Trent Waterway, work began on the Fenelon Falls locks in 1882. With the technology of the day, raising boats around Fenelon Falls was challenging, and required a flight of two locks. But for all the money that was spent excavating the canal and building the locks, and all the ink that had been spilled to persuade the government to undertake this project, boats still could not pass from Sturgeon to Cameron Lake because there was a fixed railway bridge in the way, which was just over a decade old.

For six years, the Canadian Government and the Grand Trunk Railway litigated over who would have to pay for the new bridge. The case centred on whether or not the bridge blocked a navigable waterway at the time it was constructed, if it did the railway would be responsible, if it did not the government would have to pay. The government contended that prior to the lock’s construction, the Fenelon River was navigable right up to the precipice of the falls, while the railway countered that this was nonsense—and won in the end.

While the litigation was ongoing the steamer Anglo-Saxon had been waiting to begin service passing through the lock, but by the time it was functional the boat had rotted. It was pulled out into Cameron Lake and scuttled. A.W. Parkin’s Water Witch, became the first boat to pass through the locks on May 12, 1894, and countless more followed in the years to come. The structure served as a railway bridge until 1981, when a group of recreational travellers made the last trip up the Victoria Railway. Soon after the tracks were taken up. In the mid 1990s, the railway became a multi-use recreational trail, and today the bridge swings twice a year—opening in spring to facilitate boat traffic, and closing in the fall for the use of the recreational corridor. For generations, local youth have made a sport of jumping off the train bridge.

McArthur House Hotel

During the age of the steamboats and stage coaches, it took much longer to get anywhere than it does today. In that era, steam travel was associated with progress, because it was so much faster and easier to transport large quantities of goods than in previous generations when people paddled. Because journeys of more than 100 miles took days to accomplish, travellers needed places to stay along the way. One of the first buildings in many new communities was an inn or tavern—in Fenelon Falls, it had been operated by Robert Jameson and James Wallis.

Once the railway was completed to Lindsay in 1857, with co-ordinating steamship service, long-distance travel for pleasure became practical. Most of these long-distance travellers arrived on a steamship, and some would be continuing on to other communities, especially up the Cameron Road (a similar route to present-day Highway 35, through Rosedale, Coboconk and Norland). When they arrived at Fenelon Falls many needed a place to stay. Then, there was no lock to facilitate navigation from Cameron to Sturgeon Lake, so the community had wharves above and below the falls. For travellers arriving at the Lower Wharf (now the docks below Lloyd Kelly Parkette) in 1871, one of the first buildings they would see was the Quebec and Ottawa House Hotel, which John Swanton operated as a tenant.

In late March 1874, Peter Begin purchased the lease, brought in new furnishings and the liquor that would be needed to operate (hotels often served the double purpose of being the local watering hole.) On April 16, 1874, the Quebec and Ottawa House burned and by June, Joseph McArthur removed the rubble, as he prepared to build a new brick hotel.

The McArthur House Hotel opened shortly before Christmas that year, operating on a lease to Joseph’s brother, Alexander: “The house is very conveniently situated, being close to the steamboat wharf and in the centre of the business portion of the village, a location which will be appreciated by commercial men. The building is 66 x 72 feet and has a kitchen attached of 18 x 24 feet which is provided with every convenience. On the first floor there are four sitting rooms neatly furnished; the office is in the front, and the bar is situated in the back part of the main building. The stairway leading to the second flat is very much admired, it being of superior construction, the railing of which was made by a well-known manufacturer in Toronto. On the first flat there are three large parlours, all furnished in first-class style. A feature worth noticing is the harmonic piano provided for the accommodation of guests, which will not fail to be appreciated. The second flat contains a number of bed rooms, which together with those on the third flat number forty-two, they are all large and airy, and are furnished with oak and walnut furniture. The stable and sheds are commodious, and the house has all the requisites for a first class hotel.”

In the 1880s, as the Fenelon Falls canal was being excavated, there was a great quantity of stone right in front of the McArthur House, that needed to be disposed of. Some of this stone was used to build a livery stable in connection with the McArthur House Hotel (now the Fenelon Falls Brewing Company). In 1886, a third storey was added to accommodate more guests at the hotel. When telephone came to the community, the McArthur House was one of the first buildings served by this new utility.

Following Alexander McArthur, other tenants operated the McArthur House. After Joseph died in 1892, John Aldous moved to Fenelon Falls and took over the hotel in 1893, becoming its proprietor. By 1904, it was described as a “handsome three-story building and is fitted with an immense dining room, good sample rooms [for travelling merchants to display samples of their goods], a number of public and private parlors, and has first-class accommodation for fully 70 guests. In addition to offering first class accommodation for the tourist and commercial trade, it is supplied with large and splendidly kept stone stables, which supply every convenience for travelers driving in, or the farming community.”

John Aldous also owned Little Hector, “the fastest little horse in Canada.” One day, a boarder at the McArthur House Hotel, could not afford to pay for his stay, but offered Aldous a colt instead. Aldous was interested in harness racing and entered Little Hector in a competition at the Fenelon Fair, which he won with ease. As he travelled to fairs around the district, Little Hector showed his heels to the other contestants at every race. With a little training for horse and driver, Aldous was soon travelling to compete across Canada and the United States. By the end of the 1890s, Little Hector was routinely winning races on both sides of the border. He became a national celebrity, and even had a brand of cigars named after him.

Aldous owned the hotel until he died in 1936, and his family would continue to operate the property until 1947. A later description of the building explained, that “the main floor consisted of a large bar next to Townley’s; sample room for travellers; a pool room; a large dining room and kitchen, plus a card room. On the corner of the building was the Post Office for many years with W.B. Brandon as postmaster.”

Though Fenelon Falls was once home to multiple hotels, after the Second World War, the market for accommodations was changing. With the advent of automobiles, travel became much faster and more flexible. Instead of staying in the villages, many visitors enjoyed spending summer at waterfront lodges. By then, travel by steamship was becoming a distant memory, and even the railway was noticeably in decline. The grand Victorian hotels, like the McArthur House, were superseded by many more, though smaller, motels and lodges, that accommodated the ever-increasing number of visitors to the region. The McArthur House Hotel was reincarnated as Canadian Tire, and today is the building containing Subway. Though the third storey has been removed and much of the structure is extensively modified, it is still recognizable as the old McArthur House hotel.

Kirkfield Lift Lock

Work began on the Trent-Severn Waterway in 1833, but it was not completed until 1920—and only after a tremendous amount of political lobbying. The first navigational improvements were typically relatively easy projects. More challenging components, such as linking the two watersheds between Lake Simcoe and Balsam Lake would have to wait for decades. Because the waterway was an important political issue along its course, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald realized that either proposing or letting contracts for waterway improvements immediately before an election, maximized the political gain for these extremely expensive improvements. Though Macdonald had passed away, as his third Conservative successor Charles Tupper was to face Wilfrid Laurier in the 1896 election, he let a contract to begin work on the division joining Lake Simcoe and Balsam Lake. Laurier’s Liberals won the election and favoured railways, but since they inherited a contract for one of three sections, politically, they could not allow the division to go unfinished, so they would see it to completion.

Though the Laurier government might not have constructed this lock at all unless the Conservatives had begun work on the section, the new Prime Minister was just as politically savvy as his predecessors. Contractors Larkin and Sangster along with the Dominion Bridge Company of Montreal began work on the Kirkfield lock just before the election of 1900. An earlier survey of this division proposed eleven locks, but with the use of a lift lock, R.B. Rogers reduced the requirement to five conventional locks, plus the lift lock—which was (and remains) a feat of engineering.

Rogers had already designed the Peterborough Lift Lock, visiting Germany to learn about this technology. For his second lift lock, he made some changes in the plan, replacing the concrete towers to guide the caissons (the chambers or ‘tubs’ of water that were alternately lifted or lowered). He also used a steel aqueduct to feed water instead of concrete. His design used one caisson as a counterweight for the other, using hydraulic rams to lift one as the other was lowered 49 feet—being the second highest lift lock in the world, after Peterborough. The lock pit had to be excavated entirely out of stone—which was a very laborious job in the age of blasting, steam shovels, horses and manual labourers.

At the time the Kirkfield Lift Lock was built, concrete was a new building product and few people were familiar with its use. Unfortunately, the concrete inspector on this section did not have the expertise that he claimed and had an alcohol addiction that meant that he was often absent or unfit for work if he was present. Rogers’ plan for the concrete work was not correctly followed, causing approximately 1,000,000 gallons of water to pour through the walls per hour. Rogers oversaw the necessary repairs at the cost of $254—relative to a total project cost of $717,000. Yet the supervising engineer and inspector falsely claimed that Rogers’ plan had been followed, ultimately contributing to his politically-motivated dismissal—the concrete inspector escaped any official consequences, and moved on to another job. Rogers’ treatment was at to a significant degree politically motivated.

By 1907 work was finally completed on the division linking Lake Simcoe and Balsam Lake. A gala was held on July 6, where many dignitaries attended, but not R.B. Rogers—who had designed the engineering marvels that to this day remain the two highest lift locks in the world. At the time, the Minster of Railways and Canals had also been dismissed, so the honour of opening the lock was assigned to Postmaster-General Rudolphe Lemieux. The steamer Stoney Lake was the first boat through the lock, carrying the federal party, followed by two other steamers with newspaper reporters and local dignitaries. The Trent Valley Navigation Company’s Manita brought an excursion, followed by some small gas launches—a new technology at the time, that would soon represent the bulk of traffic using the lift lock.

The Kirkfield Lift Lock were overhauled in the 1960s, as the original manual controls were replaced with automated, electric controls—from then on, a single operator in the control tower could run the lock. The lockmaster’s house was demolished, as a massive concrete structure reinforced the canal, with a two-lane underpass. On September 2, 2022, the northern caisson suddenly began to leak as the Kawartha Voyageur was being lifted—leading to a terrifying experience for those on board: “All of a sudden there was all this water coming over the lock and it was like something shifted and it was making weird noises like distressed metal and clanking,” one passenger explained. In 2023, it operated using just one caisson as repairs were completed. More than a century after it first opened, the Kirkfield Lift Lock remains a fascinating local landmark.

Fenelon’s Station Gallery

In 1874, Fenelon Falls incorporated as a village so it could approve a subsidy to bring the railway to town. By the summer of 1876, tracks connected Lindsay to Fenelon Falls and a station was complete by September, with Thomas Lockhart as the first station master. Unfortunately, this first Fenelon Falls station was short lived, burning on January 29, 1880.

After some debate about whether a new location should be chosen, work began on a new station, which was close to the original site, in 1882. The Fenelon Falls Gazette observed two shortcomings with the design, it was “so close to Lindsay St. that the train will, when brought to a standstill, extend right across the street; and secondly, the station itself, which only measures 19 by 41 feet on the outside, is far too small for a place of so much importance.” This station was divided into a ticket office, two waiting rooms and a freight room. The freight room “will be insufficient to give the accommodation required.” This station was finished with wood, “the inside being lined with narrow boards, tongued, grooved and dressed, and the outside covered with planed lumber battened with ogee strips. There are ten windows, with rounded tops, three doors opening from the platform (which is 100 feet long, by 12 and half feet wide) and the ceiling is twelve feet high. In front the roof projects about seven feet over the platform, and is supported by ornamental brackets. Externally the station will be coated in the usual brick coloured, fire-proof paint, and inside will be painted a light drab. The walls of the various apartments will have neat base-boards along the bottoms and tasty mouldings at the tops; and the building, in short, will be all that could be desired if it were a few feet longer. The head carpenter is Mr. J.L. Hughes, of Peterborough, from which town all the materials were brought.” Samuel Wright served as station master until he moved to Stirling in 1886. His replacement, Andrew “Andy” Sutherland served for many years and was much appreciated by village residents.

When the Victoria Railway was built in the 1870s, the iron horse was the fastest and most economical mode of long-distance transportation, and local commerce developed to take advantage of the railway. John H. Brandon (who owned a grocery business and grist mill in partnership with Findlay McDougall) built a grain storehouse right beside the station, which became the Co-op. It included a feed warehouse and chopping mill by 1938 (now FAILA). The Brooks Hotel was just down the street to accommodate visitors to the village (later George Wilson, now B. Armstrong Contracting). The railway also connected to the Red Mill (now Sobeys), allowing it to become the largest sawmill on the Upper Kawarthas, before burning in 1896.

The Victoria Railway amalgamated into the Midland Railway in 1882, then the Grand Trunk Railway two years later. After this company went bankrupt, it was nationalized and became part of the Canadian National Railways in 1923. This company would operate the former Victoria Railway until 1978. After the last recreational trip up the line in 1981, many people wondered what would happen to it and the associated buildings. Around 1983 the rails were taken up and the Village of Fenelon Falls purchased the old station. It served as the Chamber of Commerce and was substantially renovated in 1988, including the installation of a cinder block foundation. In 1999 the Chamber of Commerce relocated to the intersection of May, Water and Oak Streets. In 2005, a local artists’ co-operative opened the Fenelon Station Gallery and gift shop. Since then, many local artists have exhibited their work there. In 2023, the building was once again refurbished, while retaining the historic appearance of a railway station. On July 14, 2024, the co-operative celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Victoria Railway and the latest rejuvenation of Fenelon Station.

Kinmount Station

Kinmount grew around the Bobcaygeon Road’s bridge over the Burnt River. Though the Burnt River is a pleasant canoe route today, it was not practical for steam navigation because there were several rapids along the way. But it soon became one of the main arteries for exporting sawlogs from Haliburton. Being a fast flowing river that drained much of eastern Haliburton County, the logs could be floated to Kinmount. In the second half of the nineteenth century, much of the material to supply the logging camps passed through Kinmount. Over the years, several mills have also operated in the community.

For the first decades of its existence, many wagons of goods passed through Kinmount on the Bobcaygeon and Monck Roads. In 1874, work began on the Victoria Railway, which was completed from Lindsay to Haliburton on November 29, 1878. In 1876, a young contractor from Kirkfield named William Mackenzie began work on the train station at Kinmount. He soon earned a reputation as an excellent contractor, and would become one of the best-known railway builders in Canada. With partner Donald Mann, he would complete Canada’s second transcontinental railway, the Canadian Northern Railway.

Many railway stations followed a common design and Kinmount was no exception. It contained a waiting room for passengers, a ticket office and a baggage room. The bay window on the front allowed the station agent to see both directions on the line. The railway helped make Kinmount into a centre of transportation and commerce for the surrounding district. In the years that followed, the IB&O Railway was constructed running east from Howland Junction, which was just north of town. The railway station in Kinmount was often encircled by stacks of freight (particularly forest produce) waiting to be exported from the region. Kinmount station also handled many supplies headed for logging camps. During the heyday of the railway, Kinmount was also surrounded by farms. The station was so busy that it needed an addition on the north side to handle all the freight.

Many visitors to Kinmount today have no idea that it once had beautiful main street, with Victorian buildings and hotels. Kinmount has suffered from fire more than any other community in the Kawarthas, having many memorable infernos. In 1890 and 1942, the downtown surrounding the station burned. The Great Fire of 1942 even burned the sheds beside the station, but somehow, not a shingle on the station itself was scorched. It is often said that Sir William Mackenzie’s ghost protects this structure that he built as a young man. During the Great Flood of 1928, the Burnt River rose so high that it was up to the firebox of the woodstove in the waiting room. Yet the line stayed open, as trains pulled up to Kinmount station, where passengers could step into a boat for the short paddle to higher ground.

With the advent of automobiles and trucks, the railway declined over the course of the twentieth century, and Kinmount was never the same after the fire of 1942. By the 1960s, regular passenger service had ceased, and the waiting room became a storage shed for handcars. The bay windows were replaced with unsightly doors to facilitate moving equipment in and out of the building. The station closed in 1978, and it was not long until the entire Victoria Railway disappeared.

In the 1990s, the old railway was reborn as the Victoria Rail Trail. Kinmount station was restored. It has been repainted to its original colours (for a period of time it had been a dark red). More recently it has been home to Kevin Robillard, the village blacksmith, the Kinmount Model Railway and Heritage Centre. In 2007, the municipality replaced the foundation, which had settled over the years. Sitting on a level base, all of the windows and doors once carefully installed by Mackenzie’s crew started to work properly again. Kinmount Station has stood at the centre of the village, through all the changes and catastrophes that have happened since 1876.

Coboconk’s VicPly Factory

As Coboconk was situated on the Gull River, a large proportion of the timber floated down the Trent Watershed in the late nineteenth century passed through the village—some would float as far as Trenton. In 1913, the Gull River Lumber Company built a large sawmill, on the shore of the Gull River, opposite the railway station. It was a perfect location, as logs could be floated in, and the produce conveniently located on cars for export. It was built just as automobiles were beginning to appear in the region. Hauling logs on a truck was much more convenient than floating them down the river and the last drive passed through town in 1929. Within a few years the sawmill closed, in the midst of the Great Depression. The old sawmill later became a basket factory, producing many wooden fruit baskets, before burning on June 20, 1957.

One year after Coboconk’s landmark sawmill went up in smoke, the Salaman family opened a new factory, Quality Plywood, on the same site. At the plywood factory, maple logs were turned on a lathe to produce continuous sheets of veneer. Once clipped to length, they were glued together to produce thin plywood panelling in 4x7 foot sheets. Much of it was shipped to the nearby Beautiwood factory, where it was finished and sold as panelling.

The factory closed briefly, then John Hickey purchased it and renamed it VicPly. When he took over the factory, it was producing approximately 300 sheets of plywood per day in a domed-roof building beside the river. He added an office and storage building, located to the north, closer to the highway, and then a second storage building. In the decades that followed, the building expanded until it produced about 2400 sheets daily, with 68 employees. For a village like Coboconk, this made it a major employer.

VicPly sold much of its produce wholesale to lumber yards and furniture companies. Palliser furniture of Winnipeg was an important customer, as was Lindsay’s Northern Casket. With such a convenient rail connection, plywood was shipped as far away as Vancouver. In later years, shipping was via tractor trailer, which often picked up particle core or MDF from mills in Northern Ontario on the return trip—which was sandwiched between the veneers to make plywood at VicPly.

Early in the morning on October 14, 1981, VicPly caught on fire. The factory had been reduced from running round the clock to two shifts, so it was not operating at the time. As smoke was once again billowing from the plant beside the Gull River, an era was coming to an end. Though it was very important to the village, John owned other, larger, plywood factories. He did not need to rebuild and instead shifted production to other locations, such as Fergus and Montreal. The office and storage buildings survived, and have been reincarnated as Coby’s Buck and Up.

Millyard’s Drug Store - Souter’s Variety

One of the many striking buildings on the main street of Coboconk, the exterior of Souter’s has changed little since it was Millyard’s Drug Store in the early twentieth century. By 1918, Harriet Eades lived there, and married Dr. Wiley Schell Millyard in 1926. Harriet operated a pharmacy in the front of the store, while patients could visit the doctor at the back of the building. Harriet was not a pharmacist, but hired qualified druggists as long as she operated the store. After Dr. Millyard died at the age of 57 in 1942, Harriet carried on operating the drug store, while she was deeply involved in village affairs.

For four decades, Harriet’s store was also home to Coboconk’s Bell Telephone switchboard—located at the back of the store—operated by Hazel Field for many years. It also once included a public library. She affixed shelves in an unused doorway, and arranged with the Victoria County Library for circulating books. The library proved so popular that it expanded to have its own room at the back of the building. When the Coboconk library building opened, the former library became a hairdressing salon.

In 1977, Harriet sold the store to Howard and Norma Souter, who renovated the interior, doing away with the variety store, while Harriet continued to live in the apartment above. The next January, Deb Angiers took a job working for the Souters, then bought the business in May 1983, and the building five years later. She operated Souter’s for three decades, as it became a popular gift shop and a favourite spot to stop for a Kawartha Dairy Ice Cream on the steps overlooking Highway 35.

Verulam Town Hall, Bobcaygeon

For the first generation after large scale European immigration began to the area, in communities like Bobcaygeon, Rokeby (as the village north of the river was then called) and Verulam Township, many of the public institutions were very rudimentary. They were typically run out of private homes or businesses. These settlements of just a few immigrants lacked the resources to have it any other way. By the late nineteenth century, the region was growing in population and prosperity, and constructing beautiful public buildings became a priority. Often town halls and post offices were conspicuous buildings—the effort that went into making the Victorian buildings beautiful often superseded the projects in any generation since.

Verulam Township was created by John Huston’s survey in 1823. British immigrants began taking up the newly created farm lots in the 1830s. The largest local business was Mossom Boyd’s sawmill, and by the 1870s, it had grown to become one of the largest and most famous enterprises on the Trent Watershed. As the countryside filled in with family farms, Verulam Township could afford to erect a beautiful town hall in 1874, at a cost of $1,200. The Reeve at the time was Charles Fairbairn, an ambitious farmer who would go on to serve as Warden of the County and Member of Parliament. Two years after the hall was built, Bobcaygeon incorporated as its own separate municipality.

The Verulam Town Hall was a public symbol of prosperity in an era when most people valourized ‘progress.’ By the mid twentieth century, though the community had continued to grow, and enjoyed many conveniences that would have been unheard-of in the 1870s, there was no longer the same value placed on having the town hall serve as a symbol of the community. It was repurposed as a firehall, requiring three large doorways to be cut into the brickwork. In that era, the original, double stairwell was replaced by a single set of stairs. When the building was originally built as a hall, it had a cedar shingle roof. In that era, fires often spread from one building to another, as sparks fell on the shingles, hence a ladder was attached to the roof to facilitate access should such an emergency arise. ...

Verulam Town Hall - Lions Hall

While the building served as the Bobcaygeon fire hall, the Women’s Institute met at the back of the first floor. The WI room was used by the driver’s examiner, who came to town one day per week. In the 1950s, the hall located on the second story hosted many public performances, complete with a stage. Bobcaygeon did not have a movie theatre, so it was an important gathering place for the community. The old town hall has since been restored to resemble its original appearance, complete with the belfry, as it has once again repurposed to serve as the home of the Bobcaygeon Lions Club.

Beaverton Harbour

Beaverton developed as a crossroads village at the mouth of the Beaver River on Lake Simcoe. From this community’s earliest days, there was steamboat service on the lake, beginning with the Sir John Colborne, which was launched in 1832 at the lower landing on the Holland River, on Yonge Street. Mid nineteenth century roads were typically little more than a pathway through the woods where the stumps were cut low enough that an ox cart could pass. Given the condition of the roads, Beaverton’s link to the wider world was via Lake Simcoe—by boat in summer or across the ice in winter. Across the waterbody, Beaverton was linked to York/Toronto (via Yonge Street), Barrie and the Atherley Narrows (Orillia).

The Port Hope, Lindsay and Beaverton Railway (later the Midland, then Grand Trunk, then Canadian National Railways) opened to Beaverton on January 1, 1871, then Orillia two years later. Once a railway was complete, much of the traffic to and from the community would ride the rails. In 1872, a train leaving Port Hope would arrive in Beaverton in 3:10. Once the Midland Railway absorbed the Toronto and Nipissing Railway in 1881, there was a direct rail connection to Toronto via Lorneville.

Even as Beaverton was being integrated into the North American railway network, the transportation links across the lake remained important. By the late 1870s, farm families were taking up land on Thorah Island. Until 1903, when Thomas Warren Sr. built the Belle of Thorah, the island and mainland were linked by steam ships in summer. For much of the twentieth century the Warren family would continue to operate the ferry service to the island.

Originally, the community’s wharf was located at the end of Albert Street, just south of the Beaver River and its present site. In 1889, 84 local freeholders petitioned council asking for a wharf and other harbour improvements. Beaverton harbour would be designated as a port in 1891, with two piers constructed into the lake at the mouth of the river. In 1912, the south pier was rebuilt with large rocks and cement.

Once the piers were in place at the mouth of the Beaver River, boathouses were soon added on each side. Two storey boat houses were built on the south pier, that became a distinctive part of what made this vista memorable. The upper levels of these two storey boathouses served as residences. The Edwards’ boathouse accommodated their steamer, Lorna Doona, and was later owned by Colonel Fogg, then the Rogers family. A marina at the harbour would become the Beaverton Boatel in the 1960s.

While Beaverton harbour has accommodated countless boats over the years, it has also long served as a community gathering place. Dating back generations, many people came to the adjacent Barber’s Grove for a picnic, or to spend time enjoying the park and waterfront. Over the years, it hosted many Victoria Days, Dominion Days (Canada Day), Sunday School Picnics and other community events. Just to the north of the wharf, the Veale family’s Victoria Hotel stood on the corner of Victoria and Wellington Streets—being one of the first buildings that maritime travellers would see when they arrived in town. In 1947, two cement swimming piers were installed at the harbour. Fred French would teach swimming lessons there for many years. The Red Cross sponsored these classes until 1981, when their administration passed to the Beaverton Lions Club. Whether via land or water, it remains a beautiful site to visit, swim, appreciate waterfowl, while enjoying the playground and park. It is a wonderful place to enjoy a sunset over Lake Simcoe.

Mackenzie House

In 1849 William Mackenzie was born in a log shanty near the Portage Road, being the ninth child of two poor tenants, Mary and John Mackenzie. After briefly teaching school and operating the Shoofly Store in Kirkfield, Willliam and his brother Alex started a construction business. Between 1874 and 1876, these brothers built bridges for the Victoria Railway and the Kinmount station. William earned a reputation as an excellent contractor, securing many more jobs as he became one of Canada’s best known and wealthiest railway builders. By the mid 1880s, he had earned more than $1,000,000, in an era when 12 cents could buy a dozen eggs or a pound of butter.

In 1888, William Mackenzie commissioned a three-storey mansion on Nelson Street in Kirkfield (now Portage Road) at a cost of $18,000—which was four to five times the cost of more common brick homes of that era. For a gentleman who associated with some of the most prominent businessmen in Canada, he needed to be able to accommodate and impress his guests. Though they were close geographically, this mansion was a world apart from the log shanty where he was born. On the main floor, visitors could chat in the parlour, dining and reception rooms. After walking up a beautiful oak staircase, they could stay in one of fifteen rooms. The house even had a bathroom and was heated with a forced air furnace. Many families in the Kirkfield area would not have indoor plumbing or a furnace until after the Second World War.

William and Margaret Mackenzie would find a way to fit into the Canadian elite—but in the process, they made themselves conspicuous in Kirkfield. Margaret learned deportment and developed an appropriate accent as her husband was also refining his manners—no longer could he be the poor son of tenants. They became art collectors. He purchased one of the first automobiles in the region and his family soon developed a reputation for their outrageously fast driving—in a community where farmers would worry about the new machines startling their horses. A crowd might gather to see the family yacht, Wawinet, and its famous passengers. Margaret employed a floriculturalist from Scotland to beautify the Kirkfield home, as she had more than 600 maples and elms planted along Kirkfield streets.

In 1889, William and Margaret Mackenzie acquired a two-and-a-half storey brick Toronto home on Sherborne Street, south of Bloor—alongside many prominent Canadian business leaders. In 1896, Margaret bought land on Balsam Lake, which she developed with a three-hundred-foot-long mansion, that included 40 rooms, fourteen bathrooms and five fireplaces. It featured tongue and groove Douglas fir panelling from one of her husband’s British Columbia mills. She had the walls covered with French silks and would employ fifteen servants to keep the mansion operational. The next year, they purchased Benevuto, a Norman castle at the head of Avenue Road, Toronto, with contents for $100,000. This limestone mansion featured four towers. Mackenzie was knighted along with his business partner Donald Mann in 1911.

It was not clear when Mackenzie and Mann began to dream about building a transcontinental railway, but one section at a time, they started piecing together a network that spanned the country. Many of their early projects entailed finishing works that others had started. It was a very risky business, because many railways were not profitable or could only be financed with significant government subsidies. In 1914, Mackenzie persuaded Prime Minister Borden to guarantee bonds totalling $45,000,000 for the Canadian Northern Railway. Huge sums were expended building a tunnel through Mount Royal (Montreal) and the mountains from Edmonton to the Pacific Coast.

The solvency of the scheme was already being questioned, but when Sir William Mackenzie heard that Great Britain had declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914, he turned ashen, remarking “I’m finished.” The Canadian Northern Railway tended to serve smaller communities than the Canadian Pacific Railway and its debts grew so large that it was threatening the solvency of the Bank of Commerce. Lady Mackenzie passed away as this national crisis unfolded, which ended with the Canadian Northern Railway being nationalized along with the Grand Trunk into the Canadian National Railways. After collapsing with an apparent heart attack while playing golf, Sir William died on December 5, 1923. Though his most famous venture had met an unfortunate and spectacular end, his businesses had touched lives across the country: Bringing electric railways to Canadian cities and connecting communities by rail, especially on the northern prairies.

In 1927, his son Joe sold the Kirkfield home to the Sisters of St. Joseph, who operated it as a convent until the 1970s. Benvenuto was demolished within a decade of Sir William’s death. His daughter Ethel Adams lovingly maintained the summer home on Balsam Lake until the 1960s, but after she died, it was abandoned, only to be demolished in the 1980s. The Kirkfield home was briefly transformed into a museum, but by the late 1980s, local residents were wondering if it might suffer the same fate the other two residences. Joan and Paul Scott purchased the old mansion, restoring a shell that had been largely stripped of any contents of value. In 1994, they reopened it as the Sir William Mackenzie Inn, taking an interest in keeping the story of the Mackenzies alive. Today, as the memories of the inn fade into history, the Mackenzie house remains as one of the most prominent buildings in Kirkfield, reflecting the legacy of the village’s famed family.

Treaty Rock

In the first half of the twentieth century, Thurstonia became a popular destination for visitors to the region and local residents alike. Percy Skitch (father of longtime FFSS teacher Larry Skitch) commissioned Swastika Lodge, completed for the Spring of 1916. It was later renamed Thurstonia Lodge when its original name became inappropriate after the Swastika became a Nazi symbol. Visitors enjoyed performances on the verandah including singers, dancers, violinists, pianists and elocutionists. In the 1930s, Martin Thurston opened the Greenhurst Pavillion nearby, which was one of the region’s most popular dance halls for generations to come. Tourists could take Captain Charles Gray’s steamer Lintonia to the wharf, or the train to Dunsford. The steamer Stoney Lake also brought excursions. Neighbourhood children loved to swim at Thurstonia.

Just down the hill from Swastika/Thurstonia Lodge, on the shore of Sturgeon Lake sat Treaty Rock—a massive round boulder. Percy Skitch recounted that around the year 1919, a group from Curve Lake camped on Robert Knowlson’s woodlot: “There were about 30 in the party and they made rustic chairs, tables and other pieces of furniture; the women sold baskets and fancy beadwork. I believe there are still some of the cedar rustic chairs in use on the Lodge verandah. I used to chat with the chief of the group and asked him if he could relate some of the history of the big stone called Indian Treaty Rock on the shore by the boat house. On the underside of the rock, he showed me a chiselled Treaty, used in the early days to mark the boundary lines of the fishing and hunting grounds of two tribes, one from the east the other from the west. There was also a legend that Samuel De Champlain on his discovery and voyage through the lakes to Orillia stopped at this historic rock with his Indian Guides.”

To the kids who grew up around Thurstonia, Treaty Rock was a very special stone. They spent their summers climbing on it as they swam in Sturgeon Lake. Practically everyone agreed it was a very important stone, but there were many different stories circulating about its significance. Some said it was where Champlain made a treaty with local natives, others would talk about how natives from the north shore of the lake would come over to have a picnic. Many people didn’t know if the legends were true or not, but everyone seemed to agree that it was a particularly significant rock.

During the second half of the twentieth century, Thurstonia became a very different place. When Percy Skitch purchased Thurstonia Park in 1914, there were four cottages, by 1966 there were more than 400. The Greenhurst Dance Pavillion burned in 1998 and by then the open-air concerts, steamers and Swastika Lodge were becoming distant memories. Of all of the attractions that once brought visitors to Thurstonia when it attracted huge crowds on summer weekends, today treaty rock is the last one left, sitting on the shore of Sturgeon Lake. Once was the landmark in front of a busy tourist hotel, it is now situated on private property.