by Terry Boyle
In the meantime, four firemen from Bracebridge and Gravenhurst had been locked up. Apparently, the firemen were intoxicated with liquor, singing dirty songs and cussing. Their cohorts threatened to destroy the jail if they were not released, and so they were, indeed, released from jail. The whole town suffered losses, but nevertheless, they rebuilt and eventually regained their former prosperity.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Huntsville developed into a tourist resort as steamer cruises became more popular. The Hanna and Hutcheson Brothers established a factory to produce flooring, broom handles, and other products. In 1902 they organized the Muskoka Wood Manufacturing Company and built a mill and flooring factory which produced the well-known “Red Deer” brand flooring.
In 1891 the Huntsville Tannery was established. It was certainly a large operation, with a weekly output from 1,200 to 1,600 dressed hides, averaging 9 kilograms (20 pounds) each. The hides were imported to the United States, and the hemlock bark used in the tanning process reached 6,000 to 7,000 cords per annum, which, at five dollars a cord, represented $30,000 to $35,000. Sawmills monopolized every navigable lake and stream in the district.
In 1920 C.O. Shaw opened the Bigwin Inn, which soon became a popular summer resort. Other inns and campgrounds also began to appear in the area. Tourists flocked to the Muskokas, and Huntsville was a prized attraction. The development of ski resorts gave them a year-round clientele and a busier-than-most downtown.
Muskoka is indeed a special place. No wonder the Natives admired and respected it so. Tradition abounds in every nook and cranny of this district, and the people who live here can be quite protective of it. Concern and caution are the two words often spoken today. Many people worry about future development and the impact it will have on the water and on the wildlife. The existence of parks like Algonquin and the maintenance of crown lands is essential to the protection of this natural splendour — the guarantee that this magnet of nature will continue to pull at people.
North Bay
North Bay is a vibrant city of 54,000 people, nestled between Lake Nipissing and Trout Lake. From its beginnings North Bay has been a centre of transportation. The first business in the area was carried out by canoe, and the fact that North Bay was on a system of interconnected waterways was significant during the fur-trading days. These waters provided the fastest route from Montreal through the Great Lakes and beyond.
In 1961 a new set of children’s swings for Champlain Park became the key to a major discovery of artifacts from the past. The site was immediately registered as the La Vase North Bank Archaeological Site. In August 1995 excavations of the area began as part of the Heritage North Project. In May and June 1996, Laurentian University conducted an archaeological field school that located burnt timbers and other evidence, which identified the site as the location of Fort Laronde, an historic fur-trading post.
Fort Laronde was established in the late 1700s, or early 1800s, by Eustache de Laronde, an independent Metis fur trader associated with the Northwest Company of Montreal. In 1821 the post was closed and moved to Garden Island near the Sturgeon River as a result of the merger of the Northwest Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company.
The North Bay region was the site of several such trading posts prior to the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1882. John McIntyre Ferguson, nephew of the vice-president of the CPR, had visited the area and settled here, a year before the railway.
North Bay, V.E. Day, 1945. One of the many V.E. Day celebrations that occurred all over Ontario.
Archives of Ontario
Only a log cabin occupied the site when the CPR laid a new section of line at “the great, north bay” of Lake Nipissing. John Ferguson purchased property and played a substantial role in the development of the settlement. It was Ferguson who unintentionally gave the place its name, when he directed a shipment of building materials from Pembroke to be sent to him at the “north bay.” Ferguson served as postmaster in 1881–82, and later as mayor from 1919–22.
North Bay became a railway community with business enterprises surrounding the railway yards, including a roundhouse, coal depot, a repair station, and a few dwellings.
Jim Mulligan owned the first stores in North Bay, J.W. Richards established a tinsmithy in 1885, and John Bourke operated a steam-powered sawmill at the west end of the settlement. The following year he used his steam generator to supply a portion of North Bay with electricity.
The railway brought with it a surge of settlers and workers and, by 1890, North Bay was incorporated as a town. The community became the judicial seat of the Nipissing District in 1895.
In 1905 North Bay became the southern terminus of the Timiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway (Ontario Northland Railway). A gateway to the rich resources of the north, it had access to primary resources such as nickel, iron, copper, gold, platinum, silver, and cobalt, all of which assisted in the growth of North Bay. Rail connection soon included an extension of the Grand Trunk Railway from Gravenhurst to Lake Nipissing, and North Bay became a major distribution centre and link between northern resources and markets south.
The 1930s in North America were depression years, in every sense of the word. Money markets collapsed and crops failed; people were poor, then hungry, and after years of this, utterly without hope.
The whole continent was in the grip of a terrible malaise, and its people looked for heroes and a better tomorrow. This was the age of Shirley Temple, Charles Lindbergh, Fred Astaire, and Ginger Rogers — and the Dionne quintuplets.
So much has been written about the Dionne quintuplets, including Pierre Berton’s excellent book, The Dionne Years. There have been movies made, and a few years ago they were in the news again, but for less positive reasons.
It all began on May 28, 1934, at about 1:00 a.m., when Elzire Dionne, the 25-year-old mother of six, told her husband, Oliva, that she wanted assistance for the delivery of her seventh baby. Two local midwives arrived and then they sent for Dr. Dafoe. The first baby was born at 4:00 a.m. By the time Dr. Dafoe had arrived, there were two. And they kept coming.
Conditions in a big city hospital at the time would have been rudimentary for such an event, compared to modern technology; here, in Corbeil, in 1934, in the Dionne’s humble farmhouse, they were woefully inadequate. Still, Canadian resourcefulness came into play. A basket was set on two chairs in front of the open oven. An eyedropper was used to give the babies warm water. Minute amounts of rum were administered every day.
Their combined weight at birth was only 13 pounds, 3 ounces. Each perfectly formed, identical baby girl weighed approximately 2.2 pounds (about one kilogram). Yvonne, Annette, Cecile, Emilie, and Marie spent the first month of their lives in an incubator; miracle upon miracle, they survived. The Dionne family, and North Bay, would never be the same again.
As soon as the news was out, the Dionne family was grist for the media mill. Promoters from all over North America saw a huge opportunity and felt that a simple French-speaking family might be easy prey. By the time the “quints” were two months old, the Ontario government had made them wards of the Province, and by the time they were four months old, they were removed from their parents’ home.
“Quintland” was close to the Dionne homestead, but the Dionne parents soon had to make an appointment to see their daughters. The other siblings were denied access because Dr. Dafoe felt that children were “germ carriers.” The quintuplets had become a five-child industry.
Buildings popped up around Quintland, including souvenir stands that were operated by Oliva Dionne, with a sign that said SOUVENIRS — REFRESHMENTS, OPERATED BY PARENTS OF THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS BABIES. There was a nursery, a staff house, a playground building where the public could observe the quints, and an observation gallery. These children were raised in a goldfish bowl. Visitors entered the gallery in groups of 100 and viewed the children through mesh-covered windows. The compound was surrounded by mesh fencing, and police were in charge of crowd control; 3,000,000 peo
ple visited, and the line of cars sometimes stretched for 4 kilometres (2.5 miles).
So-called fertility stones lined the path to the observation platform and were free to visitors. Each morning the Ontario Department of Highways replenished the supply of stones from the shores of Lake Nipissing. Everyone needs to believe in miracles, and it appeared that the Department of Highways did, too!
The image of the girls graced, among other things, lunch boxes, serving trays, and china, and they figured prominently in print — notably, ad campaigns for all manner of food and other products, including General Motors and McCormick’s Biscuits. Dr. Dafoe ran the complex, and he and the other guardians appointed by the government determined the girls’ fate.
The town of North Bay saw the end of the bitter depression. Tourism meant prosperity to anyone who could provide accommodation, food, or souvenirs. By 1939 $2,500,000 had been spent in North Bay by those eager to see the Dionne quintuplets.
This did not come to an end until the girls were almost 10 years old! They were finally reunited with their parents, and together they moved to a new home, but with less than satisfactory results. Isolated and controlled from their earliest memory, they and their family had difficulty adjusting to a normal life together.
Emilie died in 1954, during an epileptic seizure. In 1970 Marie was found dead in her apartment; she had suffered from depression and other health problems. The surviving Dionnes publicly approached the Ontario government in the mid-1990s for a portion of the money they had earned during the 1930s. After some public pressure, the government agreed to award them $2,800,000.
Eventually, Stan Guignard, a former Canadian heavyweight boxing champion, took over the Dionne homestead. Guignard had the house moved to North Bay, where it stands today as a museum. Visitors can tour the rooms the Dionnes lived in and browse through original artifacts and paintings.
The quintets are probably North Bay’s most unusual and famous story, but it is only one story from the area. North Bay is now a major city with many government offices, a major cruise ship, Nipissing University, and Canadore College; the Northwest Trading Company has been gone since 2008. Change is ever-present, ongoing, and what we think we know today is history by tomorrow.
Oshawa
The land now occupied by Oshawa was once covered by dense forest. A broad stream, the Oshawa Creek, found its way to Lake Ontario. Those who originally traversed these waters were the Natives called the Mississaugas. They lived in a large settlement where Port Perry now stands.
In the spring the Natives bundled their pelts and paddled to a spot called Oshawa harbour. Once there, they headed west to a French trading post at the mouth of the Credit River.
The French established a trading post in the Oshawa harbour in 1750 called Cabane de Plombe, meaning “lead or shot house,” near the mouth of the Oshawa Creek. Nine years later they abandoned their log structure. It remained empty until 1794, when a party of six white settlers arrived in the area and sought refuge there. They were Benjamin Wilson, his wife, and his two sons, James and David, as well as two young men, L. Lockwood and E. Ransome. The Wilson family built a frame house on high ground about 136 metres (150 yards) back from the lakeshore. Here, Nancy Wilson came into the world, the first white child born in the Oshawa district.
On October 15, 1792, Roger Conant landed on Canadian soil at Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake) after crossing the Niagara River on a flat-bottomed scow ferry. He journeyed eastward along the north shore of Lake Ontario until he arrived in Darlington, where he hastily erected a log dwelling on his 1,200 acres before the winter set in. Four years later he brought his family from the United States to settle on this property. To invest the $5,000 in gold he had brought with him, he engaged in the fur trade. He had three flat-bottomed, broad-beamed Durham boats built in Montreal, which he promptly filled with blankets, traps, knives, guns, flints, ammunition, and beads to trade with the Natives for furs. He quickly accumulated a considerable fortune, which he invested in holdings of land along the north shore of Lake Ontario.
Conant, obviously a colourful character, once remarked that the salmon were so plentiful in those days that while he was paddling his canoe, the salmon raised his canoe up in the water. Conant went into the packing business and shipped some of those plentiful salmon by the barrel to the United States, at an excellent price. From the proceeds of one of these ventures, he bought yet another 150-acre farm on the shore of Lake Ontario. In 1811 he left his log cabin to build a frame house near the Oshawa harbour. Little did he know that his home would play a part in the War of 1812, just one year later.
When General Hull surrendered his whole command of 2,500 men at Detroit, on August 15, 1812, a serious question arose: what would the British do with so many prisoners? The redcoats decided to send the American prisoners to Quebec. Unable to furnish enough boats, many prisoners were forced to walk along the shore of Lake Ontario. The prisoners and guards alike were fed at various places along the route. When they arrived at Roger Conant’s home without warning, the family quickly set a large pot of potatoes on the fire to boil. A churning of butter had been done that day and a ham had been boiled the preceding day. The guards were outnumbered two to one, but no one escaped while feasting at this house.
A few days before Roger Conant died in 1821, he did a very odd thing. Conant decided to bury his gold in a large iron bake kettle on the bank of the Oshawa Creek. When it was noticed that the kettle was missing, a search began but failed to reveal its whereabouts. Many have attempted to find this buried treasure, but, alas, without success.
Around 1800, William and Moody Farewell and Jabez Lynde arrived in the area. Moody Farewell built a saw and gristmill on Harmony Creek and a tavern on Dundas Street. When regular stage traffic travelled this route, the Farewell tavern became a popular resting place. Jabez Lynde was the first pioneer to own property in what later became the village of Oshawa.
During this time several small communities were scattered about the area, clustered around the mills at the edges of the many creeks. On Dundas Street Edward Skae operated a store, and the settlement that grew around it became known as Skae’s Corners. Other early settlers of Oshawa included the Annis, Henry, Ritson, Ross, and McGill families.
In 1840 the settlers of Skae’s Corners petitioned the government to establish a post office. At a meeting Sydenham was the name chosen by the citizens, until Moody Farewell arrived with two Native companions. The two Natives were asked to suggest a name and they offered Oshawa, the translation of which is said to be “crossing between the waters” or “where the canoe is exchanged for the trail.”
Oshawa received official village status in 1850, with a population of about 1,000. Three years later Oshawa became a customs port. In 1856 the Grand Trunk Railway was completed from Toronto to Montreal, passing to the south of Oshawa.
The new rail and harbour facilities helped to promote industrial growth in the area. A.S. Whiting had the distinction of being the first industrialist in Oshawa, establishing the Oshawa Manufacturing Company, producing agricultural implements in 1852. Whiting originally started out as a clock salesman in 1842. His methods of operation, as he related them himself, are on record. He would bring 100 clocks, from the factory in New England, by boat to Port Hope. There he would buy a team of horses and a spring wagon, and with the clocks on board, start out on a selling tour in the surrounding district. At a farm house, he would set up a clock in the kitchen. He would then depart, leaving the clock, which he said he would collect later on his return trip. It was quite a successful technique: he very seldom had to take a clock back!
George H. Pedlar established the next plant, a tin and sheet metal business, in 1861. The new rail and harbour facilities attracted many businessmen to Oshawa, including Robert McLaughlin. The McLaughlin family was to have a profound influence on the development of the community.
Robert McLaughlin manufactured carriages in the hamlet of Enniskillen, northeast of Oshawa. In 1876 he bought a lot in Oshawa and there
he erected a modest three-storey building with a separate blacksmith shop constructed of brick. He sold the balance of the lot to the town, where a jail was built and later the city hall.
In 1879 Oshawa was incorporated as a town. By 1894 the town had an electric street railway with nine miles of main track and three miles of second track. On December 7, 1899, the McLaughlin Carriage Company buildings burned to the ground. Robert’s son, Robert S. McLaughlin, who was by then a partner in the company, was reported to have said, “We could only stand and watch our life’s work go up in flames, not only we McLaughlins, but the 600 men who depended for a living on the carriage works.”
The town of Oshawa felt a loyalty to the McLaughlin family and offered a loan of $50,000 to be repaid as was convenient. It was a good thing, too, because the city of Belleville had contacted the McLaughlins, while the ruins were still smouldering, to offer them a bond issue and a big cash bonus if they would rebuild their factories in Belleville. The McLaughlins chose to remain in Oshawa.
By 1900 the McLaughlin Carriage Company was back in business. In the United States, in 1905, the automobile emerged from the horseless-carriage stage and became an industry. The Buick Motor Company, now two years old, had just been taken over by a carriage builder named William C. Durant.
R.S. McLaughlin was determined to persuade his brother George that automobiles had a place in the world. He travelled to the United States to learn more about what was being done in the automobile field. There he met with Durant, then returned to Toronto, purchased a Model F two-cyclinder Buick, and drove it home to Oshawa. Before he was halfway there, he knew that this was the car he wanted to make in Canada. R.S. sat down and talked to his family. He waited for his father to contemplate this new idea, wondering if the response would be to continue to build carriages. Instead, his father told him to go ahead, if he thought he could make it work. That was all he needed to hear, and before the dust could settle, the McLaughlins were busy designing their first car, right down to the beautiful brass McLaughlin radiator. Those were the beginnings of the car company that was to become General Motors of Canada.