Hidden Ontario

by Terry Boyle

  In 1854 a charter had been granted for the construction of a railway from Port Hope to Lindsay. By 1857 the railway had reached town. It was later extended to Beaverton and eventually Midland. With the coming of the railway, the town entered a period of rapid expansion, and an application was made to the legislature to incorporate the town. Lindsay became an incorporated town on June 10, 1857. The population at this time was 1,100.

  Few towns escape the harsh reality of fire. Lindsay experienced such a fate in 1861, when fire swept through the town destroying four hotels, two mills, the post office, and 83 other buildings. The Purdy homestead, built in 1830, was one of the buildings lost. The homeless numbered 400. Despite the hardships, the town remained without adequate fire protection until 1892, when the Waterworks Company was formed.

  In those days the townsfolk loved to attend the opera house for a night of gaiety and relaxation. For years the opera house was situated on the upper floor of the town hall, which had been constructed in 1863. The town and its citizens wanted a new opera house, and in 1892 began construction of one at the end of the main street. The famous Canadian actress, Marie Dressler, made her debut at age five, right there at the Lindsay Opera House. She later achieved fame as a much-loved character actress and played the role of Tugboat Annie in a series of movies. Today the Academy Theatre is a beautifully preserved building and is still a cornerstone for live entertainment.

  In 1901 Lindsay was blessed by a generous contribution from millionaire James Ross for the construction of a hospital. He did this in memory of his parents, who had been residents of Lindsay.

  Here is a strange and little-known tale about our town of Lindsay. There was a bullfight — right here. Imagine the excitement! Apparently, the promoters of the event went to great lengths to ensure an authentic Mexican fight. They even imported the bulls from Mexico. Many shocked citizens openly opposed the fight and loudly protested their concerns across the country. Nevertheless, the promoters continued, promising this affair to be a bloodless fight, and they went to great lengths to ensure this. It was assured that the matadors would use only wooden swords. In August 1958 people flocked to Lindsay to watch their first, and perhaps only, bullfight. The event began with disappointment: the first bull refused to fight, and had to be lured out of the arena by a heifer. The other bulls did, however, put on a spectacular show. There was even an enraged bull, who charged the town’s chief of police when he strode into the arena for a symbolic “kill.” The chief ran to safety just in the nick of time!

  Although spectators appeared to enjoy the day, the promoters reported they lost money because hundreds of people crashed the gate.

  Lindsay today is often frequented by boaters. It is the “Gateway to the Kawarthas,” in close proximity to Sturgeon Lake, Pigeon Lake, Lake Scugog, and the Scugog River, which is a vital link to the Trent Waterway Systems. Towns like Lindsay will continue to be viable because of their attraction to outdoor enthusiasts. Their state of the art fall fair, live theatre, historic past, and scenic downtown all foretell a strong and rosy future. Gunshot wounds and bullfights will remain tales for this town to tell.

  Madoc

  The discovery of gold near Madoc in 1866 touched off a gold rush equal to that in California or Alaska. Unlike other mining centres, Madoc was well-established before gold fever struck.

  The village, situated 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of Belleville, was named after Madoc ad Owaiin Gwynedd, a legendary Welsh prince who was said to have discovered America in 1170. Prior to that lofty accomplishment, Madoc was the site of a Mohawk village. According to Native oral tradition, a party of Mississaugas left what is today Trenton for Lake Chuncall in Madoc as part of a plan to drive the Mohawks out of Ontario. A large battle ensued, and the Mississaugas defeated the Mohawks. Historians also tell us that because the lake was so small, the fish fed on human remains after the battle.

  Donald Mackenzie, the founder of Madoc, arrived in the early 1830s and set about to build a saw mill and a gristmill. For the next 20 years the community was called Mackenzie’s Mills, then Hastings, and finally Madoc.

  In 1835 Uriah Seymour and John G. Pendergast opened an ironworks in Madoc that eventually employed 100 people. The company enjoyed success at first, but the difficulties of transportation and the lack of proper fuel forced it to close down in 1845. Ten years later, an energetic entrepreneur came along, hired 200 workers, and reopened the ironworks. Five years after that, the industry employed 500 villagers.

  Madoc became a lucrative trading centre on the Hastings Road. The village, in the early 1860s, boasted four carriage shops, five blacksmith shops, two cabinet shops, a tannery, a watchmaker, and an organ company. The population of the community reached 900 by the year 1865. A year later Madoc’s population and development would burst at the seams.

  The idea of instant wealth has long haunted the dreams of man and driven many in search of gold. Marcus Powell, a division court clerk and part-time prospector, was no different. He had a hunch that he would strike the big one! On August 15, 1866, Powell, along with an old miner named Snider, went in search of the rainbow and its pot of gold. Searching high and low on John Richardson’s farm, the men made a discovery; they thought they had found copper. Their disappointment quickly turned to elation when they were told that what they had actually found, on lot 18 of the 5th Concession, was gold! Word of the discovery remained a secret for a short time but, with available gold running 22 karats pure, the story was bound to get out.

  Mr. Lyman Moon, a hotel proprietor who also drove the stagecoach, went to Belleville with the gold samples to discuss the formation of a mining company. The news was out, and hundreds of people began to arrive in the area. New hotels could not be built fast enough to accommodate these prospective millionaires. According to newspaper accounts, 2,000 people were expected from Prince Edward County alone. Eight thousand Chinese from the California goldfields were thought to be on their way. Madoc was in newspapers and magazines across Europe. The village population of 900 expanded rapidly to 5,000. The government became concerned for the safety of those 5,000 and declared the area under federal jurisdiction. On April 15, 1866, a mounted police squad of 25 men arrived in Madoc. Their job was to enforce the peace and attempt to monitor the 300 mines that would soon be operating in the area. Everybody was digging for gold.

  The discovery of gold on the Richardson’s farm gave birth to another village, Eldorado. Prior to the discovery of gold, only the Orange Hall, dating back to the 1840s, and the township hall, erected in the 1850s, stood at the site of the present hamlet.

  Madoc and Eldorado soon attracted the likes of Caribou Cameron, a colourful character who had come from the goldfields of California and the Caribou. John Angus Cameron was born in Summerstown, Ontario, in 1820. A descendant of one of Glengarry’s pioneer families, he had spent many years in the Caribou fields of British Columbia, prospecting for gold. He was reputed to have earned $250,000 in the Caribou when he sold his claim. At that time he employed 80 men, to whom he paid $10 to $16 a day. When Caribou Cameron left the Madoc area, he had accumulated another $15,000.

  Cameron’s wife, whose family lived in Cornwall, Ontario, had accompanied him to the Yukon, and she had died a short time later. To satisfy her dying wish, to be buried in Cornwall, Caribou Cameron accompanied her coffin by dog sled and pack train, and, finally, by ship around Cape Horn. When the ship arrived in New York, the customs officials did not believe his story — that the coffin was lead-lined and filled with whiskey to preserve the body. They opened the coffin to discover the body beautifully preserved and dressed as she had been when she died, several months before. This man had quite a history all of his own.

  Although most of the gold mines in the area failed due to the difficulty and expense of extracting gold, other mineral deposits were discovered, including copper, lead, marble, talc, and lithographic stone. In 1869 a quartz mill was opened, which provided employment to area residents. The mine with the most continuous operation today is a
talc mine, operated by Canada Talc Industries, which produces the only pure white talc in Canada. There is also a marble factory north of Highway 7 that makes chips for terrazzo flooring.

  One might have expected Madoc to become a ghost town after the rush, but some prospectors remained and the village began to grow, thanks to the construction of the Belleville and North Hastings Railway and a gravel road south to Belleville.

  Fire struck Madoc in 1873 and destroyed much of the village. Residents rallied and quickly rebuilt. Three years later the population was at 1,000. A short time later, the iron mines closed and the new railway system from Toronto to Ottawa went through Ivanhoe instead of Madoc, causing a change in population. The decline of the lumber trade was also responsible for lowering the population. In the 1930s the construction of Highway 7 gave the village an east–west link, and this encouraged some new growth.

  Madoc Talc Mine circa 1909. This mine is still operating but gone are the mules, and the pits are now deep in the earth.

  Archives of Ontario

  During the last 20 years, Madoc has attracted hundreds of amateur geologists and prospectors, searching the countryside for gems (even diamonds), and, of course, gold. A renewed interest in precious and semi-precious stones has put the whole area back on the map. Anyone wishing to be a millionaire could take a trip from Madoc to Bancroft and stop many times along the way to test their luck.

  Marmora

  It seems that Crowe Lake knew it had something to crow about — a huge marble rock. Marmora is a town and a township, named to commemorate that rock. Marmora is the latin plural for “marble.”

  Thirty miles north of the city of Belleville is the site of Ontario’s first mining operation. It was Charles Hayes, along with his wife, who set sail from Ireland in 1820 to follow a dream. The dream was to establish the first ironworks in Upper Canada and become the first industrialist in this new land.

  Hayes and his wife docked in New York before travelling up the Hudson River and the Mohawk Valley to Sacketts Harbour. From there they voyaged to Montreal to meet with Peter McGill, a financier, and then went on to Kingston, Ontario. The Hayes left Kingston and proceeded northwest until they came to a narrows in the Crowe River, about 160 kilometres (100 miles) hence. It was here that this entrepreneur eventually built the first company town in Upper Canada. It was a formidable task when you consider that Hayes had been a linen merchant back home, albeit a successful one. He was to start the first wave of industrialism, but not the last. Hayes had obtained an order-in-council to give him the authority to establish the colony’s first industrial location, and Marmora had all the right ingredients for the making of iron ore.

  Marmora Township was surveyed in 1821 and attached to Hastings County. A 24-kilometre (15 mile) road was constructed from Sidney Township to Marmora, and by 1824 the population of the township had reached 400.

  Marmora, not to mention the surrounding area, was laden with iron ore. This mineral is the fourth-most plentiful element in the earth. The quality of iron is dependent on the concentration of hematite and magnetite and on the ability of the iron-master to separate them from the waste rock in which they are found. The smelting of this ore has been done for more than 3,000 years. Early smelting involved charcoal fires and bellows in the production of a spongy mass called a bloom. Then it was discovered that greater heat resulted in the extraction of higher quality iron. Ironmasters created narrow, truncated, pyramid furnaces for the purpose of heating the rock.

  Hayes knew that Marmora was the right place, because iron ore was present 4 kilometres (.25 miles) to the north, on the surface of the banks of the Crowe River. Another site, now Blairton, revealed a mountain of ore available for the process. Limestone, also to be found in the area, could be used as a flux. The endless forest there would fuel the blast furnaces, and the river itself would provide the power to drive the water wheels that pumped the bellows to intensify the blast.

  In less than two years, Hayes had the first blast furnace in operation. A road had been built, and the firebricks, furnace equipment, and workers arrived to settle the village of Marmora and begin work at the new ironworks. Andre Philpot, author of A Species of Adventure, highlights this spectacular accomplishment. He writes:

  The completed works presented one solid mass of building of limestone, constructed on the face of a bank of the same material, 40 feet high [12 metres] to the level of the bank. The fires were blasted by bellows driven by six enormous water wheels, harnessed to the river. At the heart of the community was the furnace complex. All day the villagers would tend and feed its needs. At night, the flames would shoot up from the chimney heads lighting up the valley. All the time, the grinding of the water wheels and the pumping of the bellows reminded the Village of why it was there.

  Hayes completed the construction of a second furnace in 1825. The interior diameter of the structure was approximately three metres (8.5 to 9 feet), and its height was nine metres (30 feet). A pair of German bellows, each 8.5 metres (28 feet) long and 4.5 metres (15 feet) wide, were used in the operation. Philpot adds:

  For each furnace, the whole mechanism was connected to a water wheel, the larger of which was reported to be 8.1 metres [27 feet] in diameter and 1.8 metres [6 feet] wide. The wheels drove shafts and the shafts pumped the bellows to intensity the fires. These furnaces faced onto a common casting house built of limestone. Here, the molten iron would be led off into channels dug into the sand floor guttermen. For the main channel, bar-shaped moulds would branch off, and the whole shape reminded the workers of piglets feeding on a sow. Hence the basic produce was labeled “pig iron.”

  Three charcoal houses were situated on a ledge to the east of the works. These buildings had a total capacity of 200,000 bushels. One ton of iron required 300 bushels of charcoal for fire.

  The ironworks was a major source of iron ballast. In those days ships still required ballast weight in order to keep things on an even keel.

  By 1824, a gristmill, a sawmill, a brake mill, a carpenter’s shop, a bake house, a counting house, three charcoal houses, two ore kilns, and a potashery were established in this ironworks community.

  Charles Hayes was a man willing to spend his own money to attain success; the government of the time was not so committed. Hayes knew, by the end of 1822, that he was spending most of his fortune in operation costs and roadwork to get his product to market. Water transportation was the answer. He knew that although the Crowe River was impassable to the south of the village, a canal was feasible. Hayes could envision a canal from Crowe Lake to the Trent River. It was a 19-kilometre (12 mile) stretch through the bush, and he was willing to spend some of his own money on the canal project if the government would approve and assist in the idea. The Trent River canal system did not get started for two more decades, but Hayes could see where things were going. The government, unfortunately, had no intention of assisting Hayes to build a canal. His debts overcame his dream, and in September 1824 he ceded his property and industry to the trustees. In the end the creditors even possessed his household furniture. Hayes returned to Ireland a broken man, and in April 1830 he wrote, “Thus you see it is not always the person who had done the most service [who] is most likely to be rewarded, for I cannot help saying that I think I have done more good to Upper Canada than any other individual that was in it ...”

  It was his associate and financier Peter McGill who took over the operations of the ironworks. He, too, was riddled with problems of transportation, and he attempted to sell the ironworks in 1826 and 1827, but found no buyers. In 1831 the ironworks closed its doors. The first wave was over.

  By 1837 a commission was appointed by the government to investigate the possibility of moving the penitentiary from Kingston to Marmora. Although consideration was given to running the ironworks with convict labour, the idea was abandoned once again due to transportation difficulties.

  In 1847 Van Norman purchased the ironworks. An experienced ironmaster himself, he, too, was defeated by the expense of ship
ping his product and abandoned the operation in 1854 with his resources depleted. Another wave in Marmora’s history.

  The subsequent closing of the ironworks stunted the growth of the village for many years, and farming and lumbering took over as the mainstay of the economy. When gold was discovered in the vicinity in the 1860s, it was an entirely new enterprise and a big relief to the populace. From 1873 to 1880, gold mining was carried out by the Gatling Gold and Silver Mining Company, but was later sold when the operations proved once again to be too expensive.

  By 1878 the population of Marmora stood at 400. A sawmill, a carding and woollen factory, and a gristmill provided some employment for the villagers. B.C. Hubbell operated a dry goods, a grocery, a footwear and a furniture store, as well as the undertaking service for the area in 1888.

  A terrible fire in Marmora in 1900 destroyed the main business district and forced the relocation of many businesses. The following year Marmora was incorporated as a village.

  It was the 20th century that saw the mining of iron ore regain its importance, when the Marmoraton Mines (part of the American Bethlehem Steel Corporation) went into operation nearby. Millions of tons of limestone were stripped from the top of large magnetic beds to permit open-pit mining. A sintering plant was set up at the company’s mills in New York State. The company produced up to 1,500 tons of concentrate daily at the peak of the plant’s activity. The mining operations were closed in the late 1970s.

  One wonders what new wave will bring a swell to the economy of the community with the big, marble stone.

  Muskoka

  Muskoka’s pristine lakes, islands of gnarled pines, and rugged, remote beaches pull people to their shores like a great magnet. In the early 1800s, few people knew Muskoka existed. Only small, wandering bands of Ojibwa traversed this region for hunting. What a magnificent hunting ground!