Cecil Wesley Pogue “started that garage in 1933, two of his brothers had built it—Wib and Wes.” It was beside Read’s Store, with a passage way in between. “You could drive right through there with a big truck or two cars beside each other.” Read’s would later become Shea’s IGA, then Foodland. The gas pumps out front were pumped manually, “and the gas went into the glasses [which were part of the pumps so customers could see the fuel they were purchasing to be assured of its quality] and sold for 49 cents a gallon. That’s a little different than it is today!”

As a young man Harry had trained as a machinist, but cars were new to him. “I couldn’t even drive a car when I started there—I had never driven a car in Holland before. I learned my trade there, Cec Pogue was a great help for me. He used to give me magazines to take home at night to read through and learn things from. And about two years after that, I had to do my examination and I got my mechanic’s license.”

The door at the front of the building led into the garage. “There were two big doors at the back and a big door at the front,” so cars could drive straight through. “The upstairs was used at one point as the veteran’s hall. The veterans used to have a ladder coming up on the side, and the door was still there later on when I got there, but the stairs were gone.” One the second floor the front “was where Cec Pogue lived and the back of it was used for the veteran’s meetings. There was a stage in there, with a big pole across the front to hold a curtain. By the time that I bought him out, the inside of the garage was just black. The walls were black, the ceiling was black, and the floor was black—soot and dirt.” …

“Cecil Pogue had three heart attacks in a row, and I had been working there for 17 years, so I ran his business for three months while he was in the hospital. The hospital in those days was Hillcroft. A couple times a week I had to go down there and tell him how business is going.” When his employer decided to sell and retire, “I bought the business and the inventory out of the building and Wilson Shea bought the building and the property,” so he could demolish the garage to extend his grocery store. “When they tore the building down, the foundation was still there, and they were going to put the new store on that foundation, but they wouldn’t let them, they had to dig it right out six feet down and put in a new foundation.” Today, the former site of Pogue’s Garage is the entrance to Foodland.

“Mossom Boyd was born in India” where his father served in the army. “He came first to England and then to Bobcaygeon. He started off near the Beehive [Boyd was on Lot 15 Concession IV, Verulam at Kelly’s Bay, on the north shore of Sturgeon Lake], halfway between here and Fenelon Falls on a farm. He found out there was no money in farming, so he came to town, and started working for Thomas Need. Thomas Need started a sawmill here, and he started working for Thomas Need. Thomas Need was here for about six years, he was a bachelor,” until his aunt “left him some money back in England so he went back.” Mossom married Caroline Dunsford (who had grown up at the Beehive, near Mossom’s original farm and was his business partner’s sister) and they had six children together. “He had the big lumber mill going, with 600 men working in the bush cutting down the virgin pine trees between here and Haliburton.” After Caroline passed away, “he wrote to a girl in England that he used to know, Letitia Cust and she came over here.” They had three children together.

The sawmill produced lumber for export and for many years timbers were squared in the woods. “They made big floats out of them, and these floats were set in the river and they were floated” to Quebec. They used sails “to sail them and they had a tent on it, where the men who would run it would stay overnight.” Mossom “used to go with these floats.” At Quebec, they were loaded on ships to cross the Atlantic. Some of these timbers were used as masts on sailing ships. “One of my sons used to work in England and he said he used to go to a little church in Kent. When people heard that he came from Bobcaygeon they said ‘the beams in the church here came from the Boyds in Bobcaygeon. Mossom Boyd used to be called ‘the Lumber King of the Trent.’”

“This is the oldest picture of Bobcaygeon I have. It is a photograph of a painting of the locks around 1834. To the right is Mr. Need’s sawmill and to the left, the grist mill.” These mills were built for Thomas Need, who at the time owned the village of Bobcaygeon. Mossom Boyd started as his employee at the mill, then when Need returned to England, Mossom was trusted to manage the mills. Many years later he purchased Bobcaygeon and the mills from Need. Boyd built a new sawmill on Little Bob Channel near Pigeon Lake, but the grist mill continued to operate in this location into the twentieth century.

This is a photograph of Bobcaygeon’s locks and grist mill circa 1905. “Until 1920, the locks were located downstream from the swing bridge. The building to the right of the locks is the lockmaster’s building. There was a sign on the lockmaster’s house, in great big letters it said ‘Bobcaygeon.’ Nowadays, when you go on a train you see those big signs to say what town you are in and this was for the boaters going through so they knew they were in Bobcaygeon. Behind that is the grist mill. The steamer in the background is docked at the lower wharf,” the Water’s Edge Restaurant was later in this location. At that time, the locks had stone walls, with a big square timber on the edge. The lock had wooden doors, and they were opened and closed with a crank that is visible in the foreground.

This is a photograph of the swing bridge over the canal under construction, with the first Rockland House behind it, which burned in 1904. There was no need for a bridge in this location until the canal was built through this Bobcaygeon island in the 1830s. While the first bridge was presumably wood, by the end of the century, steel bridges had become the norm in villages like Bobcaygeon. This swing bridge had its pivot pier and turntable south of the canal, while the current swing bridge pivots on the north bank.

A second view of the swing bridge

This is the Bobcaygeon locks circa 1900. “With the water being so high as to run over the banks of the locks it must be spring time in this picture. The steamer in the background is the Esturion. She sailed from Lindsay to Bobcaygeon and in this picture is tied up at the upper wharf.” The Boyd family’s Trent Valley Navigation Company operated this steamer as part of an integrated transportation network. “The Estruion used to come from Lindsay, by Sturgeon Point, where it stopped and would wait from the boat from Fenelon Falls to come down and sometimes exchange passengers. Then it would come to Bobcaygeon, and land at what we call the Upper Wharf. It is just west of where the locks are. That’s where the steamboats from Sturgeon Lake used to stop. That boat used to travel back and forth to Lindsay every day, with a side wheel.” This steamer carried passengers, freight and the mail. Customers wanting to ship something could take their parcel to the company’s office. “Sometimes it was 15 cents for bringing that down.”

This photo was taken from the Grist Mill. The roof in the foreground is of the lock station. Dan Cain’s store, which burned in 1913, is visible at the end of Bolton Street. On the north shore of the canal was the bathhouse, a luxury of that era. In the distance, the tower from Bobcaygeon’s firehall is visible—the site later became the Post Office (now across the street from Buckeye Surf).

The original Bobcaygeon locks, built in the 1830s, were located below (east of) the current swing bridge. The advantage of this arrangement was that the waterpower was available for the saw and grist mill that were then located on either side of the river. The disadvantage was that with the higher water level under the bridge, there was less clearance for boats. This meant that the bridge had to be swung more often, which would hold up traffic. These locks had stone walls and wooden gates, which required maintenance. As lift locks were built at Peterborough and Kirkfield at the turn of the century, concrete was introduced as a building material.

By the early twentieth century, Boyd’s sawmill had long since moved to the Little Bob Channel and subsequently closed, and the village’s water power was being used to make electricity. New locks were constructed above the bridge and “the walls were made out of concrete, between 1920 and 1922. And then around 1968 the locks were changed again. Now they have hydraulic electric gates on them, before that they had wooden gates.” Before the electric gates were installed, the locks and the swing bridge operated with hand cranks, and local kids enjoyed helping the local lockmaster to turn them. …

“One night when I was working for Mr. [Earl] Gordon in my spare time on a Sunday night, we had to go to Lindsay and dug up a boat that had sunk. And we pulled the water out of it and I had to sit on the boat to keep the pump going while he was pulling it. We had to pull it to town, and we came down by the locks and we had to open the locks ourselves because after 7:30 the lock people had gone, and we had to open those locks and you had to stand there and crank the doggone thing and open the doors out the other end and let the water out of the lock and get the boat out again.”

The Trent Valley Navigation Company incorporated in 1883 with Mossie Boyd, Willie Boyd and John Macdonald as the largest stakeholders (being two sons and a son-in-law of the Bobcaygeon’s first Mossom Boyd). Initially the company operated the Beaubocage to carry passengers and freight from Lindsay to Bobcaygeon, while they operated the Victoria as a tug. The Victoria caught fire on March 25, 1884, presumed to be arson, but the steamboat inspector found that the charring of the timbers “is rather an improvement than otherwise, the hardening of the surface rendering it impervious to the wet.” She was rebuilt, the mill hands again getting out some of the necessary timber over the winter. On August 7, 1884 she sailed as the Esturion, becoming the Trent Valley Navigation Company’s flagship, while the Beaubocage became Boyd’s tug—though she still carried passengers on occasion. The Esturion was slightly unstable so had false sides fit the next summer. For the rest of the decade, the Esturion was clearly the fanciest passenger steamer on the upper lakes.

In September 1899 Willie Boyd took over the management of the Trent Valley Navigation Company, while Mossie agreed not to withdraw his capital from the business (by then Macdonald had passed away). Willie expanded the company to include multiple connecting ships. In 1900, he bought the Alice Ethel—which James M. Knowlson had operated carrying passengers and hauling freight—along with the excursion barge Lindsay and nine scows for $8000. He refit Alice Ethel, renamed her the Ogemah, and ran her from Bobcaygeon to Burleigh Falls. After operating for a few years, the company found that the Ogemah’s route was not profitable. The steamer sat in the water for several years with her boiler still in her, and by 1912, Willie was looking for “some junk man” who might give him $100 for the Ogemah.

A second view of the steamer Ogemah as it entered Lovesick Lake

As the Trent Valley Navigation Company was expanding at the turn of the century, they commissioned a new screw steamer, the Manita, from the Davis Dry Dock Company of Kingston. With a 66-foot keel and a 40-horsepower engine, this boat was smaller and more efficient than paddlewheelers like the Esturion and Ogemah. These steamers were powered with cordwood, which meant that the crew had to ‘wood up’ piling cordwood into the boat’s hold, and then using the wood to fuel the boiler as it sailed. In 1900, the Esturion burned 535 cords of wood, the Ogemah 323 and Manita 87. To complete its daily run, the Ogemah burned 2.35 cords (Burleigh Falls to Bobcaygeon and return), while the Manita consumed 1.04 cords (Coboconk to Lindsay and return).

Designed to sail at 11 miles per hour, in 1900 the Manita left Coboconk at 6:15 am, arriving at Lindsay by 10:30. Departing at 3:30, she was back in Coboconk by 7:45 pm, having stopped at Rosedale, Fenelon Falls and Sturgeon Point both ways, with breakfast and tea at Fenelon Falls. She connected with the morning train from Fenelon Falls to Toronto.

After the Trent Valley Navigation Company expanded to include multiple connecting ships at the turn of the century, most of the traffic remained on its original Sturgeon Lake route. In 1903 the Esturion (Lindsay-Sturgeon Point-Bobcaygeon) carried 15,992 passengers, the Ogemah 2,835 and Manita 3,938. Within a few years it became clear that the expanded company was not profitable. On June 15, 1906, the Manita burned, but was repaired to resume service by the end of the month. In 1907, the company only operated the Esturion and Manita, and then it sold the Manita to the Otonabee Navigation Company in 1909. The Esturion sold in 1914 to Peterborough barrister George Hatton for $2000 and was scrapped the following year, bringing the era of the Trent Valley Navigation Company to a close.

This photograph shows a tug, the McGill family’s houseboat (which later became a house on Front Street) and the Manita below the Fenelon Falls locks.

“This is a postcard that is actually coloured in, because there was no colour photography back then. The store on the right is the Dan Cain Store, which burned in 1913, so the picture that was used to make the postcard was taken before that. The flume that you see on the right (behind the horse and wagon) supplied water to the grist mill. The grist mill was run by the difference in the water level from above the locks and below the locks.”

“Bolton Street at a different time. We have no exact date, but it is before 1913. We do not know what is in the left store, but the next one with the awning is J.J. Bardeau’s barbershop. Next is E.J. Wollard, the drug store, then the Bank of British North America, and on the end, the Dan Cain store with groceries. Next to that is the canal with the swing bridge.” After the fire on September 14, 1913, this block was rebuilt, with the Bank of British North America in a striking stone building on the corner.

The fair is one of the oldest events in the village. To nineteenth century families it was not only one of the most exciting gatherings of the year, but by exhibiting crops, animals and handiwork, it provided an opportunity to learn better ways to make ends meet. The first fair was held jointly with Fenelon in 1860. Four years later the townships began hosting separate fairs. Over the years, Bobcaygeon’s fair has been hosted in various locations, including the market square, before settling at the present day fairgrounds. At one time, “the horse races were done on King Street, between where the Bank of Commerce is and the fairgrounds.”

This photo is of “the Bobcaygeon Fair parade on September 27-28, 1906. The parade is coming along Canal Street and is ready to turn onto the swing bridge. It is going to the market square. The team of black horses belonged to the Ventress family at Nogies Creek.” The Ventresses were the first farm at Nogies Creek on the left-hand side, when you go on Nogies Creek Road. Later Mr. Smith he married one of the daughters, and it was the Smith farm, but it started out at the Ventress farm.”

At the turn of the century, the Bobcaygeon Fair was a huge event that brought visitors from all around—as can be seen from the crowd watching the parade. In the background, past the locks and grist mill, the Steamer Ogemah is stopped at the Lower Wharf, where it docked to bring passengers from Burleigh Falls and Buckhorn.

This photograph is taken at the Bobcaygeon’s fairgrounds, looking across the track towards the barn, that once stood beside the hill, roughly where the curling rink is now. …

Continuing on around the track, there was a judge’s stand on the south side, with open parkland between the track and the river. In the early twentieth century, the parade, horse races and animal shows were much anticipated events that drew a crowd. This barn later burned down, and the property has been reorganized, with barns on the south side of the track and the grandstands and exhibit hall on the north, backing into the hill.

This is a view of King Street looking west towards the fairgrounds, with the famous King Street Elm tree. “One time I showed this picture” while giving a presentation, “and I said look at the pot holes. Gary Taylor said ‘Yeah, those pot holes are still there. But they are supposed to get them fixed now.’ That’s the way roads used to be, they were just dirt roads. The main street used to be a dirt road too, and in the fall when it got muddy, Mr. Boyd would come in with wagon loads full of sawdust and they put it on there.” If the season was wet, “by the time the horses all tramped through it you ended up with about a foot of mud!”

“This photograph of the Bobcaygeon Band was taken on fair day, 1900. The band leader, Edwin Brooks, is leading the band towards the fairgrounds. Here they are at the south end of Bolton Street, roughly in front of the Masonic Building. It was amazing the kind of a band they had in those days—the number of people in the band and the instruments they used to have.” At this time Bolton Street was a dirt road, and you can see “how high the banks were on the side. There were wooden sidewalks on both sides.”

Here is Bob Swartman with his guide boat heading through the locks. He was “one of the guides that used to go out with the tourists. It’s something that we don’t see anymore. I remember when I came down beside what is now Buckeye, there used to be a whole row of cars there, all Ohio license plates, and that’s why it is called the Buckeye. All those people used to go down to the locks in the morning and the guides used to be waiting there sometimes ten of them in a row, and all taking the people on board and going down the lake fishing. I think it was about $20 a day. They put the worms on for you, gave you a free meal of fish at noon and spent the day fishing with you. I think they took the fish off the hook for you.”

“For years Alfred Nichols was a guide on the Bobcaygeon waters, taking tourists fishing for a day or for a week. I used to work for Cecil Pogue at his garage downtown and I remember how every now and then Alf would come back to the garage and wait until I was done working at five o’clock in the afternoon. He would then say to me, ‘Harry, I have a little problem with my boat. Could you have a look at it?’ One time I spent about an hour on a hot summer evening, climbing through the windshield of his boat, going from the front of the engine to the back. Finally, I got the engine to run, and all this time Alf had not said a word. When he heard the engine running, Alf said to me, ‘Harry, I didn’t say anything but all this time I was sitting here, praying to the good man above, and he listened to me.’”

Thomas Need’s grist mill was one among the first businesses in Bobcaygeon, as it provided a way for local families to grind the grains that they raised—producing the flour to bake bread. After Need returned to England, Mossom Boyd managed the mill and later purchased the rights to the mills along with the Bobcaygeon town plot. This photo of the second grist mill was taken in the spring of 1919, which was built just to the west of the original mill, as indicated on an old map. The Moore family later purchased the mill. “It was driven by water power fed to it by the flume along the locks.” Between 1920 and 1922, the locks were relocated to west side of the swing bridge, meaning that there was no longer a head of water in the canal beside the grist mill. Later, “it sat idle for years. Then one Sunday morning some boys got in there and got the whole thing going again, and one of them got his leg cut off. That’s when the grist mill was torn down.”

“In this view of the grist mill, farmers have come to pick up farm implements that have arrived from the Massey Harris Company.” Farmers would want to have their equipment in time for spring, and winter was an easy time for hauling deliveries when teams could pull a sleigh along icy roads. In this photograph, you can see the sleighs loaded with implements. Founded in Newcastle in 1847, the Massey Manufacturing Company merged with A. Harris, Son and Company to form Massey-Harris in 1891, which became the British Empire’s largest producer of farm machinery. For generations, farmers in this area bought equipment from this company, later Massey Ferguson.

Mossom Boyd’s sawmill was originally located just north of the locks on Juniper Island, but as the volume of traffic through the lock and the quantity of lumber sawn increased, it was difficult to accommodate everything in the vicinity of the locks. The mill waste and piling of lumber on the public wharf sparked outrage, and in 1872 he received permission to build a new mill at the mouth of the Little Bob Channel on Pigeon Lake.

“They had about 60 men working down there, and it was a big operation. The virgin pine was cut, and floated down the river to here, then brought to the sawmills and cut into boards. This picture was taken around 1893. The boy in the foreground with the horse and wagon would draw away the sawdust to the burner.”

The Boyd’s last drive took place in the spring of 1903, after the Bark Lake Shanty had found “No good pine left here, cleaning out everything that will float.” The following year the mill operated intermittently cutting custom logs, the mill’s boom timber, rough pine logs, hemlock, various hardwoods, and made a small cut in the spring of 1905 under James Powers. The last order was a custom job for W.C. Moore. On April 26, the men cut up sunken logs they scrounged out of Little Bob, and for the next two days they took the belts off the mill, never to reopen. In 1908 all the machinery was taken out and the building was torn down over the winter. Boyd lumbering operations moved to Cowichan on Vancouver Island.

Even after the Boyd mill closed “Bobcaygeon was a town of sawmills. The Read brothers had a sawmill that started out at Nogies Creek, just on this side of the bridge—that whole corner there is still sawdust. They had a little steam engine in there. Later they moved, across the road from where DJ’s is on Highway 36. Russell Thurston started a mill where Jermyn’s are now. It was about the same size of a mill and steam driven. When I came down here in 1950, the Jermyn’s were still sawing with steam. And then later on it went electrical and then it was out of order for a while, and then Mark rebuilt it a few years ago. There was another sawmill up the Nogies Creek Road near the fish sanctuary there. The Arnberg mill was on Snake Point Road. There were several more of them outside of town, of course in those days there was lots of lumber around and lots of trees around and a lot of use for wood.”

“This is a picture of what we now call Port 32, east of Highway 36. The sawmill is visible at the right in the is picture, to its left if the sawdust burner with a ramp leading up to it. Lenny Cross told me that one time one of the horses that they used down there died, and they just pulled it up the slope like and just dumped it in the sawdust burner and it was cremated. Note the piles of sawn lumber to the left in the picture. These continued right up to where Edgewater condominium is.” Mossom Boyd & Company also had barracks for their workers to live in. “The four houses there were for the workers. Vincent Junkin lived there in the last house. I remember Mrs. Junkin used to bake bread there and bring it downtown on the weekend to sell on the main street. But that whole place there was full. Right in the far end there in the middle somewhere there is a sawdust burner. But that’s what it used to look like east of 36 highway, where Port 32 is now.”

“This is the lumber that was piled up from the Little Bob Bridge on Highway 36 all the way to the mill, which was where the Forbert Pool is now.” The east end of the island was laid out into a network of streets with names that reflected their use: Pine Street, Elm Street, Slab Street, Lime Street, and Rock Street. Much of Mossom Boyd & Company’s lumber was exported to the United States and marketed by Christie Johnson and John Macdonald (Mossom’s son-in-law). After they died in 1891 and 1892, the company was reorganized, and they stopped buying as many timber limits—which were becoming scare and prohibitively expensive.

This is the bridge over the Little Bob Channel, now Road 36 beside the Edgewater Condominiums, circa 1900. “It was higher than it is now, because the Boyd sawmill was where the pool is now, beside the dam down there. The tugboats had to go in there and logs passed under on their way to the sawmill. Note the oxcart going over the bridge.” Later the bridge was rebuilt with two steel spans and a pier in the centre—all much closer to the water’s surface. It has once again been replaced with concrete.

After Mossom Boyd’s sawmill on the Little Bob Channel was demolished in 1908, the site was redeveloped as a hydro electric generating station. “The original powerhouse was replaced in 1938 with a new powerhouse. This is the second electric building, and if you go down to that dam there, by the pool, you will still see the indents, in the dam, showing where that electrical plant used to be. By the time this picture was taken, it was a concrete dam, but it must have been a wooden dam to begin with. I heard that electricity came to the village in 1929.”

“This is sucker fishing off the dam on Big Bob. I can still remember that. The suckers came up to the dam, looking for little rivers to lay their eggs in flowing water, but they couldn’t get there because they were stopped by the dam and the water below the dam used to be just loaded with them. Younger people would be standing there, side by side, catching fish in the water by the dam. When I first remember, we were allowed to catch them with a hook. Some people were standing there with pike poles, some of them had hay forks, you could take them out any time at all and in any way at all. Of course, some pickerel that came into the suckers got taken too. In those days we had a Game Warden—Bruce Molyneaux was the deputy game warden—and he put a stop to it. He would come down there and he had a great big long pole and a big net on it, he used to dig them out and you would hold your bag up and he would fill your bag up for you. I used to take bags home and put them around the rose bushes for fertilizer. They were great for that. I don’t know whether you ever tried eating a sucker, they are full of little bones. This square timber dam was replaced in 1923 with one built out of concrete which was in turn replaced by the present dam in 1971.”

“This photograph was a glass negative taken by Mr. W.T. Comber around 1900. It was taken on Front Street East near the Ambassador Lodge. Looking south across the river, one can see what is now the Buckeye Centre. It was then the home of Dr. Bonnell, who kept all sorts of animals behind his house. In the distance are the telegraph poles feeding the telephone wires across the swing bridge. They had to be that tall so that steamboats going through the canal could pass under them.”

“This is a party on the Calumet, which was the Boyd family’s private yacht. The boat had a beautiful dining room inside, and they would take it out to picnics and other trips. There were dishes marked with ‘Calumet’ that (Wille Boyd’s grandson) Herb Orgill had. Bruce Stinson made a scale model of that boat, which he donated to the Boyd Museum. The engines from the boat are beside Peterborough’s museum.” Launched in 1895, the Calumet was 54 feet long and also served as a tug when it wasn’t ferrying the Boyds and their business associates around the lakes. She was a fast steamer, able to reach Buckhorn in 1:45. Willie Boyd sold the Calumet in 1911.

“Edgewood was the home of W.T.C. Boyd, it was torn down around 2006 as Case Manor constructed a new building. William Thornton Cust Boyd was a half brother of Mossom Martin Boyd. He was a son of the Mossom Boyd’s second wife, Letitia Cust.” Willie Boyd oversaw the Trent Valley Navigation Company, while his brother focused on the lumber business and breeding cattle. Mossie lived in the Big House down the road, while architect John Belcher designed this home for Willie, built in 1889. It would remain Willie’s home until he passed away in 1919.

Edgewood changed hands a few times after Willie Boyd died, before passing to Dr. Henderson, who was from New York City. Each spring Dr. Henderson brought his boat, the Islamorada to Bobcaygeon and tied it up in front of Edgewood. He took his friends from the village out on his boat, and “he had a staff on the boat, about seven people. In the winter time, his boat was in Florida. Before he left in the fall, he would invite all the business people in town. To come on board and they would cruise over to Pigeon Lake. When he left again, he would go through the locks back to New York. They told me that there was about two inches on either side of the boat when he was passing through the locks. The last time the boat went, Bill Gordon and Tommy Anderson were invited to go with him for the trip and then I think they came back by train.”

A party on Dr. Henderson’s Islamorada including Frank Poole, M. Smith, H. Jenny and Ted Shea.

In 1844, Mossom Boyd married Caroline Dunsford in a borrowed suit and these newly-weds moved into a cottage overlooking Big Bob Channel that had been built for his employer, Thomas Need, who by then had returned to England. “The walls in it were stone, about two feet thick and it was just one room, one storey.” As his family and his business grew, so did the Big House, one wing at a time. With its final additions in the 1890s, ‘the Big House’ comprised 35 rooms, with 17 fireplaces. Being built by a lumber family, much of this three storey structure was stacked lumber. “They were rough milled 1x4s, and they were about 1 1/8 thick and 4 ¼ wide. A spike was driven through them, and then they were plastered. At one time I have been told there were 60 people living at a time in the house. The Anglican minister used to live there for years, before the manse was built by the Anglican Church. Business people used to come down here, with horse and carriage to stay with them. They had a staff that lived upstairs, I think there were three rooms there for the staff—some were Chinese.”

“The kitchen was not fancy. It had copper sinks. The water was stored in a great big tank (it is in my backyard) and the water was pumped in to another big, square slate tank on the third floor that made the pressure in the water.” Built before there was electricity, this system allowed for running water. “The house was heated with hot water through radiators. The panelling is all pine. The only thing in the house that was not pine was a fireplace in a small anteroom. One day there was a farm near here that had a cherry fireplace mantle. Mrs. Boyd knew that it was going to be torn down so she bought the fireplace and had it put in the small anteroom. Everything else in the house was pine from their own mill. In the big anteroom, there is a carpet on the floor that went right over a couch at the end of the room. The story I was told was that Misses Boyd went to England, saw the carpet and bought it, and when she came back with it, it was too big for the room. So instead of cutting it, she put it right over top of the couch. You had to sit on the carpet to sit on the couch. The walls had electrical fittings that were twelve volt—there must have been a battery charger. The wiring had lead casing. The copper wire was the plus and the lead casing was the minus. There were no closets in the house, there were just cases built later to hang the clothes in. The beds all had canopies over them. It had a library, “I think at one time it was called the smoking room, and it was not allowed for ladies.”

“This is a picture of when the wall was being built around Boyd’s Big House. The story was that the farmers could bring in a load of stones for a dollar. They would pick them up around their fields and they had to get rid of them somewhere or other, so they put them on the wagon and brought them down here, and they were put together by Scottish stone masons, no cement was used in it—they were just piled in a trapezoid. I remember soon after I arrived here, in the spring time, a piece would collapse and fall out somewhere along the wall or other. Miss Sheila (Mossom Martin Boyd’s daughter) was living there, and the only guy who could fix it was Bill Cosh. He would come down and spend a few days there piling all those stones, so they would hang together. The stones on the faces of the wall were a fair size, but the inside was just small stuff. They had forms sitting around the walls to keep them straight and level. After the house disappeared, people came down and picked up a few stones. Then the next person came and got a few more stones and now there aren’t too many of them left.”

Ida Lillian de Grassi and her husband Mossom Martin Boyd are posing with their daughter Sheila on a lawnmower in front of the big house. “I’m pretty sure Mossom Martin Boyd wasn’t cutting the grass, one of his men would do that for him, he just sat down on it to have his picture taken. You can see some of the workmen standing behind it.” It was very unusual in Bobcaygeon in the 1890s to have a lawnmower or even to keep a lawn, but the Boyd estates were cared for beautifully. Inside the stone walls, it was a very different world than most Bobcaygeon residents knew.

Georgina St. Geroge and Walter Thomas Comber on their wedding day. “Her mother had moved down here from White Lake, near Irondale, and built a beautiful home on the river, that we call the Ambassador Lodge. I have the bills from the Esturion, when it brought bricks from Lindsay to build that house. He came from Bury St. Edmond in England.” Mossie Boyd travelled to England and recruited Walter to come over to Bobcaygeon. “He was brought down here and then he was sent back to go through Oxford University to get his degree. Then he started teaching the Boyd children.  The school started in Boyd’s house, but then moved to what later became the Library—in those days it was a room off the lumber office.” Later on, when it was Bobcaygeon Public Library, the entrance to the library was the former classroom.

After Walter Comber taught school in a classroom on the east wing of the Boyd Lumber office, he founded a private school on the northern edge of the village, on the road to Fenelon Falls. “For years that was a private boys’ school. Boys from all over the place used to come down there and were taught there. They had quite a strict discipline rule down there. I have a book that tells you at that they got up at 6 o’clock, were in the dining room at 6:15, then morning prayers. Walter was a strict Anglican. That’s the way the whole day went on.” Though the school was initially well attended, later on it “diminished. There was not much interest and he had to close it up. He went to St. Catherines to teach at Ridley College and in 1929 he died. He left his wife and daughter behind here—Georgina and Dorothe.”

Sheila Boyd was Ida Lillian de Grassi and Mossom Martin Boyd’s youngest daughter born in 1894. She did not marry, but instead stayed in Bobcaygeon and cared for her mother. After her mother died in 1942, she lived alone in the Big House, until she too passed away in 1982. She was the last Boyd to live at this estate, and is remembered for her generosity—including donating the Bobcaygeon Library and Boyd Museum. Most Bobcaygeon residents never stepped inside the stone walls while she was alive—Harry was one of the few who had visited.

“She lived in a couple rooms of the house. She had a bedroom, and she had a room she used to sit in at the north end of the building, where she used to paint.” Sheila also commissioned the art room that was attached to the library, across the road, where she enjoyed teaching painting. “There are a lot of her paintings around. She loved flowers and used to have the grounds kept pretty nicely. She would start flowers in her own little greenhouse, and even had them trucked around town, for five other single ladies. Lenny Cross, her hired man, had flats with the flowers on them, that he would bring around to the other ladies when she had extras. She liked to grow cosmos.”

“The kitchen had a stove in it,” with a firebox in it. “It just lasted so long and then it burned through from the wood fires. A couple of times Lenny came down and had me build a new insert for the woodstove. Why did she still use a wood stove? Well, her porridge in the morning had to be cooked on wood.”

“I visited Sheila one time. She collected pictures and so did I and sometimes I had something she didn’t have. She asked me to come over and have something to drink. She had me into the kitchen. That was as far as you would get in the house in those days, but we would sit in the kitchen and she would have a 7-Up or something sitting there for you, and she wanted to show me the flowers. She said I’m going to walk out in the back, and she had a problem in those days because her hips were gone. She said I can walk, but I can’t stand. So, I am just going to walk out there, and I will just fall on the ground, but don’t worry about it. There is nothing the matter with me, but that’s the only way I can stop. So that is exactly what she did. She walked out there at the back and she fell on the ground and she sat there and I sat on the stone, and we talked about the flowers.”

“When she was still fit, we used to see her going out in her Ford station wagon with the wood panelling on it, with her palette in the back. She would go out there someplace and sit in a farmer’s field” or some other place that caught her eye to paint.” When she came to the point of getting rid of it, I had my own garage, and she phoned me and she said Harry I want you to look this thing over and I’m going to give it to a nephew of mine. I put a new battery in it and made sure that everything else was in perfect order. She wanted to know that it was in perfect order—that’s the kind of woman she was. She gave a lot of money—in fact the whole Boyd Family did—to the Anglican Church. It’s worth going in there to see that big stained-glass window and the other things that the Boyd family donated.”

After Sheila died, Orval McLean auctioned off the contents of the house and the sale “lasted four days. When I went down, there were four people sitting there, with telephones. One for Berlin, one for Paris, one for New York, one for London, England, and they were all taking orders on those paintings. It was just ridiculous the prices that they went for. The Boyds in their years as lumber kings used to travel through Europe and come home with a lot of stuff. They had kept every doggone thing that they ever saw, there were newspapers there, clothes from the women there from years back.”

After Sheila died, the Big House sat empty, and was abused by trespassers even as village residents campaigned to save it.  “The kids got into it. And we found mattresses in there, and beer bottles and syringes and all that kind of stuff. I happened to be on the council at the time and I looked after property in the town. I was told by the reeve to see that the house was demolished. And of course I got phone calls, the phone rang off the hook. Harry, what are you going to do with the house?—Well, you want it? You can buy it?—No. The house was still intact and it was offered to the town at one time for $1 and the town wouldn’t take it. It was going to cost millions of dollars to fix it up and make something useful out of it.” It caught fire October 2, 1994—suspected arson—and the remains were demolished the next spring. “I saved a little piece of the gate and I gave it to the museum.”

“The Bobcaygeon Creamery with its owners, George and Suzie Lee, in front. The creamery was built by Charles Elliot at the spot where the post office now is. It was taken over by George Lee in 1937, who operated it with his son Lloyd until Don Whyte bought the building and operated a car body and paint shop there. In 1979, the building was demolished in order that the new post office could be built.”

“The creamery used to make butter and buttermilk. The butter was sold and the buttermilk was used to feed pigs.” There were families who kept pigs in Bobcaygeon in barns behind their houses, “and they used to feed the pigs chop and buttermilk. I boarded with the family for five years. Their son’s real name was Lloyd, but everyone called him Jesse. When he was in public school, there was a play and he was Jesse James [a post-Civil War American outlaw]. Even his wife and mother would call him Jesse—his father was the only one that would call him Lloyd. In this picture, the lady who is sticking her head through the window is Bernice Taylor—she later married Lloyd Junkin.”

“I used to spend time there looking at how they made butter and how it was wrapped. It was amazing to see. It came out, the old man would stand there and he would cut it off to the right length and then float it. There were three of them standing there. Kay, Jesse, and Betty I think was there at the time, and they used to stand there and have the paper ready the block would go down there and then they wrapped it up. It was just amazing how they could do that.”

“The Bobcaygeon Cheese Factory, September 18, 1903. Left to Right: Matthew McIlmoyle, Joe Anderson, William Arscott & Son, Charles Moffatt and Ernie Kelso (helpers), James Humphries, James Anderson (helper), Joe Kelso (cheesemaker), William Britton (with whiskers). In those days there were quite a few of them around, but when I came to Bobcaygeon in 1950, it was closed up. It sat empty for years, then Dr. Henderson, who owned Case Manor at the time and had a hospital in New York City, was going to open an ice cream factory in there. He put an ad in the paper because he wanted a name for the ice cream. I remember that it was Pete Gordon that came up with the name, or at least he was picked for it. He called it Beaubocage. Beaubocage was the name of one of Boyd’s old steamboats that was in town here. He got $25, that was the prize for the contest. They made ice cream in there for several years, then that folded too. Next the hydro took the building over and for years they kept their equipment and trucks there. The office was upstairs, and there was a garage for the trucks downstairs. Then when I was on Bobcaygeon council we built a building on Duke Street, and Hydro moved there,” beside the works department. The building sat empty again until Dave Bowland opened a computer business.” Today, it is 76 North Street Custom Printing and Embroidery.

J.H. Moore’s Waggon Shop was located on the corner of King and Bolton Streets (now the CIBC). “’Waggon’ was spelled with 2 Gs, the English way. Before it burned in 1913, the wagon shop built some of the first cars in the area by outfitting carriages with single-cylinder engines. One of the cars is at Settlers village, I think they are called the W-O-O-T. The first image is the south (King Street) side of the shop with R.L. Wright (father of Margaret Ingram and Roberta Kennedy), S. Woods, G.B. Moore, George Humphries and James Kingsborough in the doorway. …

The front of the Moore’s Waggon Shop on Bolton Street, with the delivery wagon of A.E. Bottum’s hardware store in front. The steel banding on the telegraph poles was to prevent horses from chewing on it while tied to it. When the horse was standing there doing nothing it was likely chewing on something, and that’s what kept them from chewing on the poles.

In 1922, Clarence Poole built this garage at the former site of the Moore Waggon Shop (now the CIBC). This photo was taken around 1940. It shows Clarence on the left, and his daughter Evelyn in the doorway (she later married Don Rosenburg). His son, Frank, went on to operate Buckeye and serve as Reeve of Bobcaygeon. Note the unusual spelling of Kawartha/Kawathe on this garage.

“Clarence started that garage. The first car he sold was Vauxhall (it was an English built car) and then it was a Chrysler dealership. When his son took over, he changed it to General Motors. Later Jim Dickson purchased the business. Jim played the organ at Trinity United Church and he was a fantastic player. He could play anything you asked him to play without the music. The house next to it was where Clarence Poole used to live. The garage was built out of cement blocks, and this new building did not burn.” Though the CIBC looks very different with a brick façade, it “is still the same building, it has just been remodelled over the years.”

The South School in 1890. “The village used to be split.” The part south of Big Bob Channel was called Bobcaygeon, and the north shore was Rokeby. Children from Bobcaygeon went to this school, while “all the kids from Rokeby had to go to the Rokeby School.” There was a school in Bobcaygeon by 1846. By the 1860s there was a log schoolhouse on the island, while Rokeby students were taught in a lean-to attached to the tavern. (Imagine what their grandchildren growing up in the era of prohibition would think of that!) 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, which is visible in this picture taken the following year. In 1956 a new Bobcaygeon Public School opened on Balaclava Street, which had six classrooms.

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.

This is the Rokeby School, which “I turned into a garage. My wife said you should see if you can get to be a school teacher at the high school in Fenelon Falls… it’s a nice clean job. We had two Fenelon Falls school teachers living in town here, Gus Martin lived right next door. I went right down. ‘Great idea, great idea Harry give me your papers and I will have them translated and I’ll give you all the help I can.’ So, I went down to Bud McCartle and he had horses down by the cemetery. He was feeding the horses and leaning on the hay fork. I told him my story. And he said: ‘Now why would you want to become a school teacher?’ I said, she said that’s a clean job. ‘Well, you turn around and go tell her that she is crazy. You got the clean job, fixing cars. I got the dirty job teaching them rotten kids in that high school.’ That’s why I started the garage down there.”

“It was a double brick wall building and that was the school for the north side of town. It was a one room school, with two cloak rooms in there, one for the boys and one for the girls.” The classroom was located at the back. In 1929, the Rokeby School closed and all the kids had to walk to the South School.

“Wilhelmina Bonnell bought it and she had it for about six months and then she sold it to the Plymouth Brethren. The Plymouth Brethren was a religious sect. They bought it and they called it the Gospel Hall. When it came up for sale, they had to pay taxes on it, there were no church services anymore, that’s when I bought it. Just to make you jealous, I paid $2500 for it with the property.” Harry operated his garage there, passing it to his son Pieter. Today it is T.S.L. Auto Stop.

The Verulam Town Hall was built in 1874 at a cost of $1,200. “The upstairs was also used for plays and the stage is still there. In the building was a holding cell in which the town drunks spent many a night, it is now at Settlers Village. Later when the council moved to their new location, the fire department got the use of the lower front part, while the Women’s Institute used the lower back part as their meeting room. For years the driver’s examiner came to town one day per week and sat in the W.I. room.” In this photograph, the ladder on the roof was to facilitate fighting fires as fires often spread from sparks falling on cedar shingles. A stable was located beside the town hall. Constructed by Verulam Township, it was later sold to the Village of Bobcaygeon. The building is now home to the Bobcaygeon Lions Club.

This is Henry Devitt’s Restaurant and Gordon Devitt’s store on Bolton Street in Bobcaygeon. “T.G. Devitt (Gordon) sent a postcard to his girlfriend in Dixie, showing his business with an X marked on it, trying to persuade her to come here. May Stanfield did come. “She married Gordon and they did not have any children. I saw them every day when I was working at Pogue’s Garage. When there was a thunderstorm, Gordon put out umbrellas and rubber boots for sale just to attract business. The building is now North 65.”

“Gordon was the oldest one of five boys—the other four are half brothers of him, because his mother died and then his father remarried, there were no girls in the family, just Gordon, Harold, Henry, Lloyd and Martin (who moved to Fenelon Falls).” Harold and his wife Mary had a taxi business and garage. You would always see them “outside, pumping gas, or he was driving a taxi all over town.” Harold was the sort of person that “can’t walk, he could only run. He was always on the go, he always had to be somewhere soon.” In 1978, Harold’s son Ken purchased the Esso Station at the corner of King and Need Street, operating both businesses for one season before selling the downtown property to Fred Reynolds who demolished the old garage. As his bussing business expanded, Ken built a new facility south of the village in the 1990s, where his daughter Sheree continues to operate a garage.

“This is the inside of Read’s Store and it is what it looked like when I came to Bobcaygeon in 1950. There were bolts of cloth on this side and Old Mr. Shea, Old Eddie, used to work in this part here and the boys worked on the other side selling groceries and vegetables. Later the whole store became vegetables and groceries and this part disappeared.” …

“Frank Read lived in the house next door to the store. The store started as F.W. (Frank Weller) Read’s Store. Then it was Sheas, then the IGA, and now it is Foodland. After Shea’s bought it, I can remember Wilson Shea coming down with the step ladder there, and using the name “Read’s.” He painted little pieces out of it and added little pieces to it and made out of it Shea’s with an apostrophe and an ‘s.’ And then he put under it ‘Shea’s Signs Unlimited.’”

Originally, Alexander Trotter operated this building “a furniture store in the front and an undertaking business in the back. At the time this picture was taken, Ethel Finley (Mrs. Ernest Irwin) had a dress shop in it. Later Fred Walker had a bakery there. Later still, Ephriam Goodhand had a bakery and grocery store, as did Harry Given. When Goodhand owned the business, his children Betty Beatty, Vivian Wilson and their brother Claude used to go out on Saturday night with a horse and wagon, and peddle the bread through the town—just like the milkman used to go around. The building burnt on 15 April 1966 and was rebuilt with the present structure.” The new building has operated as the Grill and Cone, Mac Doo’s and is now the Daylight Diner.

“This building was built in 1871 from local limestone and started as Alexander Orr Temperance House. It was a hotel and a restaurant business, but dry. For many years, there was no beer or liquor sold in Bobcaygeon. After I moved here, sometime around 1968, there was a vote held on whether we want beer or liquor in the town and it was overwhelmingly ‘Yes.’ Then they built the liquor store and later the beer store came to town. Before that you had to go to Lindsay to have a bottle of beer. I remember the young fellas going down there on Friday night and getting 6 or 8 bottles of beer and sitting them in a row there and just gulp one after the other. And then they would drive to Bobcaygeon again. Out front there was a wooden sidewalk and people would sit and talk in front of the building. Nowadays we don’t have time for that.”

On the south side of the Commercial Temperance House, Alex operated a dry goods store. 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 and the Source. “The library started out on the main street on the other side, and in those days it was called the Mechanic’s Institute, it was later renamed the library.” Then it moved to the former Orr hotel. “For years the library was on the corner there. Amy Cosh was the librarian there, before it moved” 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.

“The Herb Mark’s Clothing Store, 1939. To the left is Thomas Cosh and by the door is Mr. Herb Mark. He had a clothing store there for years. When he died, Wib took over. Wib was for years and years the chairman of the hydro commission. Later he got into real estate. I don’t think there were too many mornings when I had my garage that he didn’t come down and have a good chat with me.”

“The fella you see standing on the left on the steamboat is Elijah Bottum. He came to town from New York State. I have been told that his real name was Longbottom. He dropped the Long off if it and just kept the Bottum. He had two sons,” William and Albert Edward, who was named after the future King Edward VII, being born on the day he visited Peterborough in 1860.”

After moving from Ogdensburg, in 1873 Elijah started a steamboat company with the Ontario. In 1878 he purchased the Maple Leaf. She was a small vessel 43.15 feet long, weighing 13 1/3 tons, but proved very durable, running thirty-six years despite burning in 1883 and sinking several times. He operated the Maple Leaf through the 1880 season, then decided to sell her and build a better passenger steamer. John McFadden constructed for him the screw-propelled passenger steamer Eva, named for his daughter at the May 21, 1881 launch. Seventy-two feet long, with a thirty-horsepower engine, she ran to Lindsay before connecting to Bridgenorth in 1883. In 1883 the Ontario was refit to run between Lindsay, Sturgeon Point and Bobcaygeon, commanded by Alfred Thurston, son of prominent farmer and lumberman Jabez. That same year, Bottum resigned as reeve of Bobcaygeon, bought the village’s Forest House (which is where the Riverwalk is now) and had a major surgery at Toronto. On October 25, 1887, the rebuilt Maple Leaf, caught in a squall, was leaking badly, so her crew decided to run her aground. Hitting a rock and capsizing instead, the crew escaped. After Boyd’s Beaubocage raised her, Parker Davis, her owner, then sold her back to Bottum. As Elijah was then retired, W.H. Bottum often captained the ship. Elijah Bottum died at Bobcaygeon on July 11, 1895, aged 62, after a long illness.

A.E. Bottum’s hardware store was located on the west side of Bolton Street between Robinson’s Great T. Mart and the Hamilton’s Book Store. “It was a wonderful store and it had one of the biggest pot-bellied stoves in it. On Saturday night, when the stores were open until 11 o’clock there would be a whole ring of farmers standing around there, telling their stories. They had a worker there whose name was Percy Braine, and it always amazed me how close he could cut glass. He could take a big sheet of glass, put a ruler on it, put a thing around it, take his hand and just break a half inch off it it—the whole thing would come off in one piece. When I tried it myself, it never worked.”

“One day, Percy told me, the other day Gordon Devitt (who had a general store about two stores away) came in walking down the sidewalk like this [holding two fingers a distance apart] and said Percy, this is the size of the piece of glass that I want. And he got it. When he got back to the store it fit!”

“Roy and Claude Bottum in front of their Hardware store. After A.E. retired, his sons Roy and Claude operated the hardware store. Roy, his father A.E. and his father Elijah were all Reeve of Bobcaygeon and Warden of Victoria County at one point (and A.E.’s father Elijah was also reeve). They were prominent people and very nice people. Roy lived in the house that is now Monk (Hendren) funeral home. There used to be a little wooden shack sitting there. He had that moved someplace, and then had that house built. Roy came down to the garage every doggone morning at coffee break in the store to tell us all the dirty jokes that he heard in the store there. They used to sell everything you could think of in there. They had bamboo fishing poles out front—before the steel and nylon ones came out. The tourists used to catch muskies and they had to be over 45 inches long before you could keep it. But when they caught a big one, the guides would come and lay it in the window of Bottum’s hardware for a couple of hours for people to see it.”

The Whyte House was started by Annie Devitt (sister of J.J. who started the Devitt enterprises in Bobcaygeon, she was Mrs. William Whyte) “as a tourist place. She ran it until 1920, when it was sold to Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Pardy. In 1947 the Pardys sold the Whyte House to George and Mabel Hunking, who, in turn sold it to the Masales in 1966. The Whyte House operated until 1984, when the property was sold to Paul Pankhurst, who tore the buildings down and built Sherwood Gardens apartments. Mabel Hunking told me that each summer they were booked full and that at times there were 30 cars in the guest parking. The dining room, which held between 50-60 people was always full.”

Two guests, Whyte House owner George Hanking and fishing guide Percy Nichols Sr., circa 1955

“An example of the beautiful architecture of times past: The Rokeby Hotel was built in 1875 by Jackson Read. In February of 1905 it burned down and was replaced by the present building at Main and Front Street East. First named Hotel Royal, but commonly known as the Hunter House,” it subsequently operated as the Hotel Iroquois and is now known as the Iroquois Apartments.”

Joseph Goulais built the first Rockland House at the corner of Bolton and Canal Streets. “It is a beautiful building. When you compare it with the second Rockland house and what is there now, then you will find out what money will do. This was built at a time there was cheap labour, and it is a nice limestone building,” with nice woodwork. The Second Rockland House was brick and built in a less ornate style. It burned down on April 12, 1904, one year before the Rokeby Hotel. “The reason all those hotels used to burn in those days was every room was heated with a fireplace fired with wood. Of course, that only lasted so long and then the whole building would take a fire. The wooden part of the second Rockland house was built along the canal in 1904, and the back part along Bolton Street was added in 1912.” …

In the view of the Rockland House when it was just the wooden building, taken between 1904 and 1912, “the horse and carriage you see was the stage coach.” By then the train had reached Bobcaygeon, but the stage still operated. “It used to come from the south and bring the mail in here and passengers.” …

By the 1930s, gas pumps stood on Bolton Street in front of the Rockland House. “In those days, there used to be around six gas pumps on the main street.” The second Rockland House burned on November 18, 1966. “We could see the fire up where I was living,” on North Street.

“The C.P.R. Station in Bobcaygeon. The train ran from 1904 until 1958, beginning with two runs per day and later reduced to only one run per day. When I first came to Bobcaygeon in 1950, I left Toronto at 8 o’clock in the morning and arrived in Bobcaygeon at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. The railway was called the Pontypool, Lindsay and Bobcaygeon Railway,” reflecting its route. It operated as part of the Canadian Pacific Railway.” …

By the time the railroad came to Bobcaygeon in 1904, Mossom Boyd’s sawmill was winding down, but some of his last loads of lumber “was brought across town by horse and wagon, loaded on rail cars and moved that way.” Previously, lumber was loaded on scows, which were towed to Lindsay, then loaded on rail cars there. Needless to say, it was a lot of work to stack all that lumber. This photograph shows a load from Mossom Boyd Company to J.C. Scott Company of Toronto on August 15, 1904. “The gentleman in the picture is Maurice Welsh.” …

“The train brought all kinds of things to Bobcaygeon. In the summer time a lot of tourists used to come to Bobcaygeon by train. It also brought coal—that’s what the black sheds that you see there stored, they were the coal sheds. In front of them, there were white tents. That’s where the cattle were held until they were shipped away to the slaughter houses in Toronto.” A white corral led to the railway, beside the sheds. “The rails used to run right up to Sherwood Street and there was a big pipe sticking out of the ground. They could bring a tank wagon down there and hook it up on that pipe. They also pumped gasoline from Sherwood Street underneath the ground down to the main street for Harold Devitt’s gas pumps. They filled the tanks up that way.” In this photograph showing the corral and sheds in the foreground, the McGill Houseboat is visible in the background.

“At Kenstone Beach or Ancona Point, if you put your hand up and the train stopped there for you. I remember coming down with that train there and you could walk alongside it, it was just as fast,” in the village. “When the train came into town, the locomotive had to be put on a turn table, and put in front of the wagons again and then it went back to Lindsay.” …

“That is the railroad station that sat there until 1958 and then they put wheels under it and took it down to the property that is now Victoria Place. At the time Bob Thompson owned it,” operating his aggregate business there. “It sat there until Fred Reynolds bought the property. He wanted to get rid of it so he put an ad in the paper, does anybody want it? Nobody came forward so he had George Jackett from Fenelon come down and demolish it.”

“The Cain Brothers General Store was built in 1874 and it operated under that name until 1906, when it was changed to Edgar’s 5, 10, 15, 25 Cent Store. In 1924, the widow of Thomas Edgar started Locust Lodge.” It has been home to the Big Tomato restaurant, the Chocolate Horse, and continues to operate as the Bobcaygeon Inn.

The Bobcaygeon Independent office around 1900. Charles Stewart, the owner of the Bobcaygeon Independent is standing in the doorway talking with Dr. Charles Bonnell, who lived next door to the east. “The building that you see beside it was the laundry, which operated by a Chinese man.” E.D. Hand “was the originator of the Independent. He later quit here and moved to Fenelon Falls where he started the Fenelon Falls Gazette.” After Mr. Stewart, “Mel Thurston took the newspaper over, when it was across Prince Street from Kawartha Dairy.” Today, the Bolton Street site is home to Buckeye Surf.

Bob Henderson, Joe Henderson and Charles Fairbairn stand in front of Bob Henderson’s Blacksmith Shop with Tom Patterson’s horses. The blacksmith shop was just north of the north bridge, east of the former site of Henderson House in the park there facing onto Front Street, kitty-corner to the Market Square. “I have a ledger of the Henderson shop of 1910-11 and in there we find that a horseshoe in those days cost 30 cents and the setting of a shoe was 15 cents. Sometimes two shoes set was 25 cents.”

“Christ Anglican Church was designed by John Belcher and was dedicated by Bishop Bethune on 14 August 1871. This picture was taken on Christmas Day, 1899. The little chestnut tree in front grew to be a big tree and I can remember when it was cut off at the ground and when the circle was still on the ground. The picket fence out front was to keep the cows out. That building has changed so many times. The chimney has been put from the back to the front and the front to the back the whole building has been raised up three feet to put a basement under it so they could put a heating system in it. But it is still the same old building.”

The first Anglican rectory was built in 1872.” The outside walls were made by nailing one-by-four boards on top of each other. It was torn down in 1928 to make room for the new rectory, which was built in 1928-29. Some of the lumber from the old building was used in the new building, which cost a total of $8,500.”

“The Bobcaygeon Baptist Church was built in 1879 and the building still looks like it did when it was new. The triangle in the middle of the intersection is grass growing in the road. Because the horses rounded the corner each way, the grass kept growing in that piece in the middle. Everything had a picket fence around it those days, and the church a wooden sidewalk” so on a muddy day, ladies would not have to walk through the muck in their Sunday best on the way to church.

“The Bobcaygeon Methodist Church was built in 1860 under the direction of contractor Thomas Taylor—he was Clayton Taylor’s grandfather. In 1925, the name of the church was changed to Trinity United Church. In that year, the Methodists, Congregationalists and Presbyterians went together to form the United Church—but quite a few of them didn’t go along with it and kept their own church,” as the Presbyterians did in Bobcaygeon. “In this picture you can see the woodshed and horse stable at the back of the church and the old manse to the left of the church.” At this time, the church would have been heated with firewood and “people came to town with their horse and buggy on Sunday morning. You see it had picket fences. Every building in town had picket fences to keep the cows from running off the road. A lot of people in town had a cow. In the morning the boys would round the cows up and put them in the pasture field. But while they were walking one cow on the street, the others could stray into your garden. You see the wooden sidewalks and the dirt roads.”

“Amy Ellen Cosh (1902-1967) was the town librarian for 34 years. This picture was taken in 1947 when the library was located in the Masonic Building. She lived in a big house where the Riverwalk apartments are by the bridge and by the old post office. She is holding the stamp that was used to stamp the date on your library card.”

Knocky Thurston operated the gas station at the corner of King and Need Streets (now Ultramar), “He used to be the driver’s examiner for obtaining a license. When I had to take my driving test, he went down to the garage where I worked. I think my boss had phoned him. He came down to the garage with the papers: ‘It’s you? OK. Get in the car.’ We went through Shea’s parking lot (Foodland). We drove through the little alley there. We drove down to the swing bridge. He said stop there. ‘You work at Pogue’s garage, don’t you? Then what the hell I am doing here. Here’s your papers. I got to go to the bank right here.’” [The Bank of Montreal]

“His wife, Irene (nee Irwin), operated a nursing home in the house. Our first son, Pieter, was born there, which was handy because at that time we lived in the stone house at the corner of William and King Streets.  Knocky did all kinds of different things. He was a gun collector. He had a beautiful collection of guns and revolvers and all that kind of stuff. He was also the guy to take your driving test. He used to grow beautiful roses and castor beans beside the service station.”

“Dr. McKinnon was the veterinarian in Bobcaygeon for many years. This picture was taken in 1956 at his last residence at the corner of Queen and Head Streets in Bobcaygeon. He was a bachelor, he never married. If you went into the back of his house, you might as well stick your head in a bottle of ether, because that’s what the whole place smelled like. There were all kinds of medication in there. He was a great man, who always had a joke to tell and was always happy. The medication and pills from his veterinary business all ended up in a museum in Milton.”