Hidden Ontario

by Terry Boyle

  At the age of 19, Joseph Brant was sent by Johnson to Moore’s Charity School in Lebanon, Connecticut. The main mission of this college was to teach Natives to abandon their Native environment, mix with non-native students, learn English, and become missionaries among their own people. Joseph excelled in the two years he attended. Some historians believe that this was where he was converted to Christianity.

  Upon his return he married Christine, the daughter of an Oneida chief, and together they resided in a frame house. Although they had two children, Christine died young of consumption in 1771; Brant married Susannah, who also died of consumption two years later; he was married a third and final time, to a woman named Catherine.

  In 1776 war broke out between Britain and the American colonies. A year later at Oswego, a Council of the Six Nations was held with officers of the British Indian Department. A Treaty of Alliance was agreed upon and the Natives joined in the service of the King. For the next several years, Joseph Brant fought the American colonists from the Hudson River to the Ohio River in the Mohawk Valley. In 1779 Major General Sullivan, in command of the American troops, attacked the Native villages of the Mohawk Valley. He and his troops destroyed 41 Iroquois towns and left thousands of homeless Natives.

  During a raid near Detroit, Brant developed a fever, which he treated in a traditional way. He went to a hill known to have rattlesnakes. There he waited for one to crawl out to sun itself. He caught the snake and took it to his camp, where he boiled it in water to make a broth. After drinking the soup he recovered quickly.

  A peace treaty was signed in 1782 between England and the new United States. Without a territory to call their own, the Six Nations of the Iroquois looked to American and British governments for some assistance. Chief Brant chose to come to Canada with the British. The British assisted the Mohawks and other Iroquoian nations by giving them a tract of land on the Bay of Quinte and a further purchase of land on the Grand River, 10 kilometres (six miles) on each side of the river from its mouth to its source. The Natives then had property but no longer had possessions. Consequently, Brant went to England in 1786 to adjust the claims of his nation for their service during the war.

  Land ownership became an issue of confusion and misunderstanding. The major problem concerned the right of Natives to dispose of their land as they wished. The government contended that the land had been given to the Natives in trust, for their own use only, and that no property could be disposed of without official approval. Joseph Brant believed that the Natives were a distinct nation able to enter into agreement on its own with individuals or sovereign states. He had no problem with selling or leasing land to non-natives to create an income. Some Natives, themselves, had concerns over the dispensation of the money. In the long run, land ownership came to an end in 1841. Samuel Jarvis, Indian superintendent, decided that the only way to prevent white settlers from intruding was to surrender the land to the Crown to be administered for the sole benefit of the Natives.

  Joseph Brant, with his 3,450 acres of land, built a two-storey house out of timber brought by water from Kingston in 1800. He chose a site at Head-of-the-Lake overlooking both the bay and the lake. Joseph and Catherine were the first citizens of the present City of Burlington. On November 24, 1807, Joseph Brant died in his home at the age of 60. His body was removed to Six Nations land near Brantford. The location of his gravesite is not public knowledge.

  One great tragedy from which Joseph Brant never fully recovered was the death of his eldest son Isaac. He was a young man with a fierce temper and was often under the influence of alcohol. During one of his drinking bouts he had an argument with his father. They came to blows. Tragically, during the fight Isaac suffered a head wound which later became infected and caused his death. Brant turned himself in to the authorities and asked to be tried in a court of law. He was found not guilty of the crime.

  The earliest recorded settler on the site of the present-day city of Burlington was August Bates, who arrived in 1800. Joseph Brant at that time was selling land to his Loyalist friends, such as Nicholas Kern, who purchased 200 acres; Robert Wilson, who bought 211 acres; and Thomas Ghent, who acquired farmland from Brant in 1805. A community began to develop around the Brant homestead.

  Shortly after Brant’s death in 1807, James Gage purchased 338 acres of land, where he erected a mill and other commercial establishments. By 1817, 16 dwellings stood in the hamlet, which they called Wellington Square in honour of the Duke of Wellington. In 1826, a post office was opened.

  The construction of wharves, warehouses, and a large flour mill helped to create a busy centre of commerce. By 1845, 400 inhabitants called Wellington Square home. Wheat became a major export commodity of the area. Dozens of schooners anchored in the busy harbour, and on some days long lines of carts drawn by horse or oxen would be waiting on the shore to unload the grain. Shipbuilding also became a major industry in the settlement. At one time 17 sawmills operated in the area, and by mid-century Wellington Square boasted a tannery, a pottery, two wagon makers, a foundry, and several general stores.

  Meanwhile, Port Nelson on the lakeshore, located at the bottom of what is now the Guelph Line, had also become an important and busy shipping point. In 1873 the hamlets of Wellington Square and Port Nelson amalgamated, becoming the village of Burlington. The name came about as a distortion or variation of the name Bridlington, a town in Yorkshire, England.

  By 1913 Burlington had its own coat-of-arms, designed by Miss Arial Shapland. The village had, by then, annexed some of the adjoining territories and became a town in December, 1914.

  In 1937 construction of the Joseph Brant Museum was underway on the original site of Brant’s home near the shoreline of Lake Ontario. It was and still is a replica of Brant’s abode. Today, inside the museum, visitors can experience four galleries that exhibit artifacts relating to the life of Joseph Brant, the history of Burlington, traditional Iroquoian life, and Canadian costume. The museum also has an impressive reference library on the same subjects.

  In 1958 the amalgamation of Burlington, Nelson Township, and a part of East Flamborough Township helped to create a new and much larger town of Burlington. At one time it was known as the largest town in Ontario. It was allowed to retain town status because of its relative lack of industry. The Burlington Skyway was officially opened in 1958, and at that time it was the largest bridge ever to have been constructed by the Ontario Department of Highways. The centre span of the bridge is 36 metres (120 feet) above the harbour entrance and the bridge is 7 kilometres (4.37 miles) long.

  Burlington achieved city status on January 1, 1974. Since that time, it has seen a steady flow of progress and development.

  Across the road from the Joseph Brant Museum stood the Brant House, a famous hotel and dance hall on the shores of Lake Ontario.

  Archives of Ontario

  It does seem ironic that although this was Joseph Brant’s first home, and although he was generous to subsequent settlers, and despite the fact that many Ontario towns reflect their native roots through their names, there is no connection made to Joseph Brant in the name of Burlington.

  Cobalt

  On a fall day in 1903, blacksmith Fred LaRose of Cobalt worked more than a horseshoe with his hammer. According to local lore, Fred threw his hammer at what he thought were the glimmering eyes of a curious fox peeking at him from behind a rock and instead struck a vein of silver.

  Earlier that year two lumbermen, J.H. McKinley and Earnest Darragh, were exploring the timber limits when they spotted metallic flakes in the rock at the south end of Long Lake. The men extracted some samples and sent them away to be analyzed. The results specified silver values of 4,000 ounces to the ton.

  The site was staked on August 4, 1903.

  This discovery was to spark one of the richest silver booms Canada had ever seen. It gave rise to many additional discoveries that ultimately became a billion-dollar Canadian mining industry.

  News of the discovery of silver brought Dr. Willet G.
Miller, Ontario’s first provincial geologist, to the site. He soon set up a sign beside the railway tracks that read COBALT STATION.

  A mining rush was on and people from around the world came to reap their share of the riches. By 1910 the silver production of Cobalt ranked fourth in the world. The mining industry, comprised of more than 100 mines, eventually produced 333,419,562 ounces of silver at an average price of 58.95 cents an ounce.

  In 1911 the population of Cobalt and surrounding area had reached 13,000. A year later the town was incorporated, but no one envisioned the mining rush lasting more than a few years, and as a result the town was built up in a haphazard manner on the west side of Cobalt Lake. The business district of the community provided goods and services to the prospectors and mining companies who purchased land around and under the townsite. The settlers were treated as squatters, because civic and social needs were not to interfere with mineral exploration. A resident of Cobalt could be evicted from their home, at any time, if a silver vein was discovered beneath their house.

  By then the town featured 18 hotels that catered to visitors and employees of the mines; four banks serviced the financial needs of the mining industry; and six churches, two schools, a courthouse and jail rounded out the public services. The development of the town attracted a broad cross-section of people. British and French immigrants made up the basic business core and the miners were primarily of central and eastern European descent.

  Cobalt, like any other town, was not without misfortune. Its first disaster occurred in May 1906 when tons of dynamite exploded, causing a fire which destroyed a large section of the town. This was the first of what was to be many fires to besiege this small community. In July 1909, another fire left 3,000 people without homes.

  The spring of 1907 was remembered for an epidemic of smallpox that claimed the lives of many, including Dr. William Henry Drummond, the famous habitant poet. After helping to fight the disease for many long days and nights, the doctor died in his sleep at his home at the Drummond Mine site east of Cobalt. A cairn, dedicated to the memory of the poet, still stands today on the site of his home. In 1918 an outbreak of influenza claimed more lives.

  By the 1920s the price of silver had dropped sharply, many mines were closed, and still others ran dry. The community itself declined drastically during the Depression of the 1930s, but a strong band of those pioneer miners and their descendants have remained to keep the heart of Cobalt beating.

  In 1953 a group of dedicated citizens decided to preserve the rich heritage of the area. Cobalt’s Northern Ontario Mining Museum opened in 1961 to feature one of the country’s finest silver collections, not to mention photographs, artifacts, and memorabilia from the earliest days of Cobalt. In 1985 the Cobalt Historical Society created the Heritage Silver Trail, a self-guided tour through the back roads of the Cobalt camp. Visitors travel to various sites, which focus on different aspects of mining. Each site features history and information signs, as well as photographs, encouraging one to relive the great silver rush of 1903 and experience the exciting history of this mining camp. A travel guidebook is also available at the museum.

  The town of Cobalt as it appeared circa 1908.

  Archives of Ontario

  For those who are up for some exercise, the walking tours of Cobalt feature all-day activities that help you to discover a century of living. The tours begin at the museum on Silver Street, where the story of the mining is told in 7 galleries — the story that made the once-booming community of Cobalt famous.

  After touring the museum, you walk left along Silver Street to the Classic Theatre. Built in the 1920s, the theatre was the last of a string of live vaudeville theatres that operated in the early years of Cobalt; restored in 1993, the building is now a state-of-the-art live theatre once again.

  The next stop is the Royal Exchange Building. Built in 1909, this is now the site of the Fraser Hotel, one of Cobalt’s most impressive buildings. It was fitted with special fireproof doors on the upstairs suites and boasted a purple-mauve glass sidewalk that was lit from underneath. During the 1930s it served as a beer parlour.

  On Prospect Street you come to the oldest structure on the street: The Bank of Commerce. Cobalt’s first bank actually opened in a tent on August 9, 1905. It is said that paydays were so busy at the Bank of Commerce that the manager would remove the windows so the miners could climb through to be served.

  The town square is the next site, located at the corner of Prospect and Argentite Street. This was the central meeting place in Cobalt. Arriving settlers would leave the train station, climb the hill to the square, and fan out in search of vacant land.

  Argentite Street was actually called Swamp Street at one time because the sludge from the Coniagas Mill located at the bottom of the hill often flowed onto the street.

  The section of land down the hill towards the arena was once called Pigtown. (The Nipissing Central Railway operated regular streetcar service down into Pigtown, carrying shoppers, residents, and miners.) Cobalt boasted other neighbourhoods too — Fintown, Frenchtown, and squatter communities around the mining sites.

  The Cobalt arena is on the tour as well. This was where the Coniagas Mine was located, on the hill behind the arena. You can still see the ruins of this operation.

  Back up toward Silver Street is the site of the Fire Station. Fire was a nightmare for townspeople. Numerous fires have destroyed the buildings, ruined livelihoods, and killed residents. Many of the early structures were built quickly with any available material, including old dynamite boxes; they were tinderboxes waiting to go up in smoke.

  Farther down Silver Street you will come to the Coniagas #4 mining shaft. This is one of the most unique buildings in Cobalt. The mining company sank a shaft here in 1914, even though it was right in the centre of the downtown. The shaft was sunk to a depth of 350 feet (100 metres). A cage, which was used to transport four men down the shaft, is still in the building. After the mining company left Cobalt, the building served as a grocery store. The owner relied on the cold underground air to keep his meat cool.

  Today, Cobalt no longer represents the mining boom of 1903. Gone are the surplus of hotels and the prospectors who filled them. What remains is a small historic community struggling to survive the changing times.

  Cobourg

  Samuel Ash of New York State arrived at Kingston in 1797, after travelling across Lake Ontario in an open boat with his father and his brother-in-law. Their first purchase was two oxen, and then they headed west where they heard there was land. They found 200 acres that took their fancy and settled in to clear it. Low, wet, and somewhat swampy, with great meandering creeks that wound their way to Lake Ontario, this terrain would be transformed by visionaries and dreamers into a town called Cobourg.

  Among the many privations from which the settlers suffered, one of the greatest was the lack of footwear. Mr. Ash would tell in later years how he sometimes came home from work in the evening to find his wife absent. He would know that she had gone in search of the cows, which were in the habit of straying into the woods. He would then set out to look for her, in the knowledge that he could find her by tracing the marks of her bleeding feet on the stones and brush as she went along.

  Eluid Nickerson came next. The following year, 1798, he built a log home near the present-day King and Division business section of town. Elijah Buck arrived in 1808 and he, too, accumulated a large tract of land and promptly opened a tavern. The settlement became known as Buckville until the name was changed to Amherst, and then to Hamilton, after the township in which it was situated. In 1819 the village was renamed Cobourg in honour of the marriage of Princess Charlotte to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, Germany. The extra o crept in, presumably through ignorance of the correct spelling.

  In 1827 Cobourg had about 40 houses, two inns, four stores, several distilleries, a gristmill, and a population of 350. There was still no harbour, but plans for one were underway and there was talk of a railway from Cobourg to Rice Lake and Peterbor
ough.

  The 1830s saw the beginning of a massive wave of immigrants. Cobourg had its new harbour by then, and it offered both rich and poor the opportunity to settle. By 1847, 5,393 immigrants had landed here. The citizens of Cobourg felt that their community was destined to be a city of greatness one day. The harbour and proposed railway to Peterborough were expected to bring great prosperity. Cobourg’s residents even hired a noted Toronto architect, Kivas Tully, to design a town hall.

  Excavation and construction of the town hall was underway by 1856. Three years later Victoria Hall was almost completed. The local newspaper, the Star, described the interior of the building by stating, “As you enter, a spacious outer court presents itself to the chastely decorated Hall of Justice, the south wall of which has been tastefully painted with the Royal Arms in the centre, without color, and as though the whole were a piece of sculpture. The whole of the woodwork has been painted and grained in a superior manner under the superintendence of Mr. Hayden, who took the contract for painting the hall. Carpets have been laid down and stoves erected in the rooms required for use at the assizes ... Too much praise cannot be given to all parties.” On September 7, 1860, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) arrived by boat at 9:30 p.m. and officially opened Victoria Hall.

  The townspeople, fired with zeal to expand, obtained a charter to build a railway from Cobourg to Peterborough. On February 9, 1853, the first sod was turned near the corner of University Avenue and Railroad Street.

  In the past, officials had considered a number of schemes to connect their town and Rice Lake, and, more particularly, Peterborough. In 1846 they had attempted to build a plank road to Gore’s Landing, Rice Lake, but in only a few years the planks had split and rotted. The only solution, it seemed, was a railway.