Читать книгу From Queenston to Kingston - Ron Brown - Страница 8
ОглавлениеNiagara: it’s a word that brings to mind different images. To movie buffs it’s a classic 1953 Marilyn Monroe film of the same name; to history buffs it’s the many battles that raged across the torrential river; to tourists it’s the foaming falls that leap from a limestone precipice; to wine lovers it’s the home of the latest VQA; and to comedians it’s the age old joke about the falls being the second biggest disappointment on a new bride’s honeymoon.
But beyond the tour buses and the neon cacophony of Clifton Hill, Niagara hides a treasure trove of Ontario’s lesser-known heritage features — the vestiges of a strange buried gorge, the ruins of an ancient fort, a forgotten ghost road, some of Ontario’s oldest surviving homes and churches, as well as a tale of heroism, and a long forgotten camp movement. For this Lake Ontario adventure, only that portion of Niagara that links to the lake is explored, mainly the area north of Queenston.
To get the whole picture, it is necessary to return to the ice age. As noted earlier, for an estimated two hundred thousand years, mighty glaciers came and went across the landscape that today is Ontario, the latest finally beginning to release its icy grip around twenty thousand years ago. Even as the ground of central Ontario began to emerge from the ice, a mighty lobe remained lodged stubbornly against the stone ramparts of the Niagara Escarpment. Before doing so, it had disgorged a massive deposit of sand and gravel that completely submerged a preglacial gorge that had served as an outlet for what had been an earlier version of the Niagara River.
When the ice lobe finally receded from the escarpment, Lake Erie once more began to empty northward. With its old outlet now sealed, the waters sought another path, and began to carve a new defile, creating today’s Niagara Gorge. Flowing northward, the waters entered a lake that was much higher than the Lake Ontario we know today (Lake Iroquois). As the waters lapped against the escarpment’s cliffs, they left behind a series of gravely beach ridges and sandy lacustrine deposits, both of which would define the history of Niagara.
With the glaciers finally gone, early animals and humans began to filter onto the landscape. In Niagara, however, there were two major impediments blocking their easy movement. One was the craggy cliff-lined ridge of the escarpment, which in the Niagara area is at its steepest. This left only one feasible route, that which followed the buried gorge wherein once flowed the preglacial river. The second impediment was that posed by the raging new river itself. Thus, movement both north–south and east–west was severely restricted.
Once the first aboriginal populations were gone, either by annihilation or assimilation, the tribe known as the Neutral moved in to occupy much of the western side of the river. The various nations of the mighty Iroquois Confederacy roamed the forests to the east, and eventually the Neutrals succumbed to Iroquois supremacy and disappeared from history.
Next came a parade of Europeans, beginning with the French: La Salle, Father Hennepin,1 and Champlain all trouped through Niagara, each awestruck by the mighty falls, but also by the strategic importance of the river and the high cliffs. The British were next. In 1763, having gained much of North America from the French during the French and Indian War, they constructed important military outposts on both sides of the Niagara River at its Lake Ontario outlet — Fort Niagara on the east, and Fort George on the west.
More war was to follow. In 1776, England’s thirteen American colonies decided they had had enough of England’s domination and declared their independence. Seven years later they achieved it. The east side of the river became American, the west side stayed British. While the falls remained the focus above the Niagara Escarpment, two key towns began to take shape below — Queenston and Butlersburg, which later went on to become Newark and then Niagara (and now Niagara-on-the-Lake).
In 1807, the deputy postmaster-general of British North America, George Heriot, toured the Niagara area and noted that
Queenstown is a neat and flourishing place, distinguished by the beauty and grandeur of its situation. Here all the merchandise and stores for the upper part of the province are landed from vessels in which they have been conveyed from Kingston…. Between Niagara and Queenstown the river affords in every part a noble harbour for vessels, the water being very deep, the stream not too powerful, the anchorage good, and the banks on either side of considerable altitude.2
At first Queenston was the more important of the two. Situated at the immediate base of the escarpment, it became the terminus of a key portage around the falls and the gorge. Beginning at the end of navigation on the Niagara River above the falls, at Chippewa, the portage struck inland and followed a winding route, descending through the buried gorge to the head of navigation of the lower Niagara River, namely Queenston. To this day, Portage Road in Niagara Falls follows much of that early trail.
Named by Upper Canada’s first lieutenant governor, John Graves Simcoe (who introduced Anglo-centric nomenclature to most of his domain), Queenston quickly attracted the shipping business of local industrialist Robert Hamilton.3 Here, in the dying years of the eighteenth century, he built wharves and storehouses from which he shipped flour, guns, and other necessities, offloading them from schooners and placing them onto wagons for the tiring trek up the escarpment.
But the Americans were never far away, and neither was their ambition to bring England’s remaining North American colonies into their rightful fold, namely as part of the now-named United States of America. To their surprise, most of the Loyalist inhabitants of Upper Canada didn’t share that goal. Thus began the War of 1812. Battles raged back and forth. York was burned in 1813; in retaliation, Washington was put to the torch, although private businesses and homes were spared. It is said that the White House was so named following a whitewashing to remove the smoke stains on the building. After the British took Fort Detroit, the Americans launched a series of raids throughout southwestern Ontario. One of the more decisive battles took place early in the war at Queenston Heights.
Because of Queenston’s strategic importance as the terminus of the vital Niagara portage route, it was defended by General Isaac Brock and a force of British troops. Its significant location was also the reason that the Americans wanted it. On October 13, 1812, American troops slipped across the river and surprised the British, killing Brock early in the battle. At first seeming victorious, the Americans then had to face a Native force. Although small in number, the warriors, led by Major John Norton,4 bottled up the Americans until General Roger Sheaffe arrived from Fort George with reinforcements. Fearing the chilling battle cries of the Iroquois, the remaining American forces refused to cross the river, and the invaders were put to flight.
As commander of the British forces in Upper Canada, and being provisional lieutenant governor, as well, Brock in death warranted a special monument. After having been completed to a height of 14.5 metres, construction on the first Brock Monument was halted in 1824 when a cornerstone was found to contain a rendering of William Lyon Mackenzie’s rebellious Colonial Advocate newspaper. A second monument on the same site was completed in 1828, but was destroyed in 1838 by a suspicious explosion attributed to rebels sympathetic to Mackenzie. Finally, the monument that stands on the site today was completed in 1853. It soars fifty-six metres into the sky, and the cut-stone structure is inlaid with carvings of lions and the four figures of Victory. From its apex, Brock’s sword points north down the Niagara River, and can be seen on those rare clear days from the shore of the lake.
The little-known building to which Brock’s body supposedly was carried still stands in Queenston as the Stone Barn at the rear of 17 Queenston Road. So does the only Anglican church in the world dedicated to a layman, the Brock Memorial of St. Saviour, located at 12 Princess Street. It was completed in 1879.
Another hero was Queenston resident Laura Secord, who, after overhearing American soldiers billeted in her home talking of a pending assault on the British, undertook a gruelling hike, guided in part by aboriginal allies, to the headquarters of Lieutenant Fitzgibbon where she delivered her warning. Her actions on that muggy night in 1813 helped the British to repel the American assault. While her home has been restored, the headquarters used by Fitzgibbon is but a ruin.
Over the years, there has been remarkably little change to the built heritage of the main street of Queenston.
William Lyon Mackenzie, too, has a link with Queenston, for it was here that he initially published his anti-establishment Colonial Advocate newspaper. After moving to York (now Toronto) in 1824, he went on to become the very first mayor of that city in 1834. Mackenzie pushed for a more representative form of government, the upshot of his actions culminating in the ill-fated rebellion of 1837 for which he was exiled. But villains can just as easily become heroes and, following his return to Canada, Mackenzie once more became involved in politics.
His Queenston printing office deteriorated until, by 1935, only the walls remained. Although restored between 1936 and 1938, it served as little more than a municipal office until 1958. Finally, in 1991, shortly after the 200th anniversary of the Niagara Portage Road, thanks to the Niagara Parks Commission and the Mackenzie Printery Committee, old-style printing presses were installed, and today the building houses the hands-on Mackenzie Newspaper and Printery Museum and the lithography studio of Canadian artist Frederick Hagan. Meanwhile, in Toronto, Mackenzie’s Bond Street home (once thought to be haunted) contains his original presses and is also open as a museum of his exploits.
Following the war, Queenston resumed its importance as a transportation route around the Niagara Falls. An important road followed an early glacial beach ridge at the base of the escarpment, west to the village of Ancaster — another key pioneer settlement at the head of the lake. In 1839, Queenston became the terminus of Ontario’s first railway operation. Known as the Erie and Ontario Railway, it was a simple horse-drawn tram that rocked along on wooden rails covered with only a strip of iron. This new mode of travel linking Queenston with Chippewa effectively eliminated the old portage trail. From Queenston, passengers would be shuttled from the rail station to the wharf, where they could board a steamer to Toronto, while from Chippewa, travellers could sail to Buffalo.
Soon after the line was opened, William H. Smith, compiler of the Canada West Gazetteer, visited Queenston. “Before the opening of the Welland Canal,” he wrote in 1846, “Queenston was a place of considerable business, being one of the principal depots for merchandise intended for the west … which now finds its way by the Welland Canal.”7 The railway, he noted, was “commenced in 1835 and completed in 1841 … which passes close to and above the falls of Niagara, and during the summer the cars run daily and steamboats from Buffalo meet the cars at Chippewa.”8 At Queenston “during the season, boats ply here regularly from Toronto, and stages run from Hamilton to meet the boats.9” In 1846, he also noted that “a horse ferry-boat plies across the river from Queenston to Lewiston.”10
Six years later he would add in Canada: Past Present and Future that “a suspension bridge is now nearly completed across the river…. It is supported by wire cables, ten in number carried over stone towers … the total length is twelve hundred and forty five feet (and) is supposed to carry a weight of eight hundred and thirty-five tons without breaking.”11
By 1886 the Illustrated Historical Atlas of the Counties of Lincoln and Welland was noting that “the bridge which gave way to the more convenient one at Clifton (now Niagara Falls) had its cable wire stays broken by the ice gorges in the river it spanned and today all that is left of the bridge, which excited the wonder of all when finished, are several large twisted wire cables that span the river, still securely fastened to massive stone towers on either side.”12 In 1854, the Erie and Ontario railway line changed its name to the Erie and Niagara Railway, and was extended to Niagara (the name changed from Newark to Niagara in 1798) and then on to Fort Erie. Steam locomotives had by then replaced the horses. Today, those Queenston wharves are the site of a busy jet-boat tour of the rapids, while the rail line is now a walking and cycling trail.
In 1893 another railway arrived in Queenston, the Niagara Park and River Railway. The eighteen-kilometre route began at Niagara Falls, Ontario, and followed the brink of the Niagara River Gorge, providing tourists with vertigo-inducing views deep into the tumultuous abyss. In 1899 a new suspension bridge was built across the river, linking Queenston with Lewiston, New York, and the tourist line was then able to cross to the American side and follow a circle route. After seeing the river from above on the Canadian side, travellers would cross at Queenston and follow the bottom of the gorge to Niagara Falls, New York. However, following a series of rock falls, the route was abandoned, and the bridge removed. Today, the stone-block abutments, now overgrown, and the weed-filled pavement of the road that once led to it are the only “ghosts” of this once vital link across the border. The high level Queenston–Lewiston Bridge now connects the Queen Elizabeth Way with Interstate 190 in the United States, completely bypassing Queenston.
Although its transportation role is now history and its traditional businesses replaced by B & Bs, Queenston offers many vestiges of those grander days. Several of Ontario’s earliest and grandest homes can be found on the quiet backstreets of this riverside village. One of the more prominent landmarks of the former main street is the South Landing Inn (21 Front Street). Built in 1827, it retains its two-storey porch, while modern additions provide accommodation for today’s travellers. It was here that one-time owner James Wadsworth earned a Prohibition-era reputation as a rum-runner to the United States shore, at the same time allegedly returning with illegal immigrants.
Two homes that date from the 1820s sit at 48 Queenston Street and 25 Princess Street, and a red-brick house at 93 Queenston may well be the oldest in Queenston and one of the oldest in Ontario. It was built in 1807 by Robert Hamilton, who had earlier helped launch Queenston into its role as a transportation node.
Unfortunately, the elegant mansion, known as “Glencairn Manor,” is not visible from the road, but its southern pillars and twenty rooms overlook the riverside site where John Hamilton, Robert’s son, built steamers for the Queenston to Toronto run.
One of Ontario’s most scenic drives, although short, is along the Niagara Parkway. Administered by the Niagara Parks Commission, it links Queenston with its sister riverside town, Niagara-on-the-Lake. The route itself is not new. An earlier and more twisting dirt version was the one that met George Heriot, who followed it in 1807. He recounted that journey, enthusing that “the scenery from Niagara to Queenstown is highly pleasing, the road leading along the summit of the banks of one of the most magnificent rivers in the universe.”13
Due to the scenic appeal of the river, and its access to a navigable section of the Niagara River, wealthy Loyalists and army officers chose its banks on which to build their grand homes. And, being farther from the American bombardments during the War of 1812, a few of those early mansions remain standing.
What is arguably one of the grandest homes visible from the Niagara Parkway is the southern-style “Willowbank.” Built in 1834, it is considered a classic Greek revival-style house, with grand pillars lining the east façade. Its history is linked to that of Queenston, as its builder was one of Robert Hamilton’s sons, Alexander. The eighteen-room limestone structure sits on a bank overlooking the river, on a seven-hectare property. Though not open to the public, the house has processional steps, hand-carved capitals, and classical mouldings. A grand spiral staircase graces the inside of the rear entrance.
The Parks Commission has been careful to balance the privacy of property owners with the public appeal of the river road. Newer homes generally are accessed by service roads that parallel the main road, while scenic pull-offs allow travellers to follow the pathways to the riverside. Historic plaques describe the many heritage highlights of the route, such as Vrooman’s Battery, from which cannon fire harassed American troops attempting to cross the river during the War of 1812, or Brown’s Point, where Adam Brown opened a tavern and operated a wharf from which local settlers could ship their produce. Two of the river road’s grander homes are also highlighted. Built in 1800, a plaque describes the “Field House” as being one of Ontario’s oldest brick homes. Located at 15276 Niagara Parkway, the house remains in private hands (after briefly being used by the Ontario Heritage Foundation) and is protected by covenant.
Another grand home of similar age is the “McFarland House.” Built by His Majesty’s boat-builder James McFarland in 1800, the house served as a hospital for both British and American troops during the 1812 conflict. King George III had granted McFarland 240 hectares of land, and he and his sons fired bricks in their own kiln to build the impressive structure. Now owned by the Parks Commission, the house, since 1959, has operated as a museum, complete with a nineteenth-century style yard and garden. The McFarland House is located at 15927 Niagara Parkway. Despite its proximity to Niagara-on-the-Lake, it was one of the few buildings from that community to survive the torching of the town by the Americans.
Today’s Niagara-on-the-Lake has evolved into one of Ontario’s major tourist attractions. While the annual Shaw Festival draws tens of thousands of visitors, the city’s situation as a jump-off point for Niagara-area wine tours draws even more. Its heritage homes and historic main street are lures for tourists year-round.
Originally, the location, due to its proximity to water transportation, its bountiful supply of fish, and its defensive advantages, attracted the Neutral Nation. The British, too, saw its military strengths, and established a fort here in 1781, calling the community Butlersburg. In 1792, lieutenant governor John Graves Simcoe, who was fond of naming anything he could after locales in his cherished England, renamed it Newark and established Upper Canada’s first parliament here. But he soon realized that it was too vulnerable to the Americans, who had built Fort Niagara just across the river, and moved that function to a safer location across the lake, to a place he called York. Shortly after Simcoe returned to England in 1796, the town restored its original name, or at least one close to it: Niagara.
In 1807, Heriot wrote that Niagara may not have been particularly healthy: “a swamp [between the fort and the town] becomes, at particular seasons, from the vapours exhaled from it, prejudicial to the health of those whose residence is by the river, and sometimes to that of the troops in the garrison.”14 This was an observation in stark contrast to the healthful properties being promoted less than a century later. But of the town itself he wrote, “The houses are in general composed of wood and have a neat and clean appearance, their present number may amount to two hundred,” [houses which would lie in a smouldering ruin a mere six years later]. “The streets are spacious … so that the town when completed will be healthful and airy.”15
While Queenston thrived as the terminus of the Niagara portage road, the town of Niagara grew into a key port of entry for goods destined for the area’s settlers. Its location on the Niagara River made it a focus for many of the battles that raged during the failed attempt by the United States to annex their wayward cousins in Upper Canada. In 1812 the Americans slipped across the river and burned the town to the ground.
“Nothing but heaps of coals and the streets full of furniture that the inhabitants were fortunate enough to get out of their houses met the eyes in all directions,” one visitor was quoted as saying in the Atlas of Lincoln and Welland Counties. “We were very apprehensive that a mine was left for our destruction.”16
The ruins of Ontario’s best “ghost fort,” Fort Mississauga, are now surrounded by a golf course in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
But once the occupying forces had retreated across the river, Niagara began to rebuild, many of the owners building on the original foundations despite orders to move their homes farther away from the river. The British Army quickly rebuilt Fort George, also adding Butler’s Barracks and the more strategically located Fort Mississauga. Although Fort George was too far from the river mouth to be useful, Fort Mississauga lay directly across the river from Fort Niagara on the American side. At this time, the land around the new fort was owned by James Crooks, a merchant and land speculator. In order to keep Crooks from developing the land around the fort, and thus possibly endangering prospective occupants, the government exchanged his property for a parcel of land farther from danger. (Crooks’s former property is now the golf course.)
The fort was built on the site of the Mississauga Point Lighthouse. Dating from 1804, it was the first brick lighthouse built in Canada. Although it somehow survived the otherwise total destruction of the town, a new fort was more vital, and the stones from the lighthouse were incorporated into the new fort, as were many of the ruins of the town. But a light was still needed, and a new beacon was placed on the fort, where it remained in operation until the 1840s. For several years afterward, only the light on the American shore guided ships into the river. A number of shipwrecks convinced the government that new lights were needed on the Canadian side, as well, and in 1904 a pair of range lights flickered on. These lights continue to guide pleasure craft to the new yachting harbour.
Following the War of 1812, Niagara quickly re-established its role as shipping centre for the northern part of the Niagara Peninsula. Soon steamers began carrying tourists to Niagara, where they would board stages to see the wonder that was Niagara Falls. It also regained its role as the seat for the counties of Lincoln and Welland (a role it later lost to St. Catharines). To accommodate this new function, English architect William Thomas designed a simple, classic stone courthouse, built in 1847, that served as the district seat for fourteen years.
To house the growing number of tourists, hotels began to spring up, among them the Whale Inn and the Moffat Inn. In 1832, the Niagara Harbour and Dock Company built new wharves and shipbuilding facilities. Eight years later, Ontario’s first railway, the Erie and Ontario Railroad, was completed between Chippewa and Queenston. It was extended to Niagara in 1854. But the bubble would soon burst.
An early view of Niagara’s courthouse, originally built as the county seat in 1849.
Back in 1851, the second Welland Canal had opened, replacing the limited capacity of the first, much smaller, canal. In 1853, the Great Western Railway extended its route well to the south of Niagara, allowing through east–west rail traffic to bypass the northern peninsula completely. In 1859, another new railway, the Welland Railway, with its north–south link, was built from Port Colborne to Port Dalhousie, its builders ignoring intense lobbying by Niagara for a link of its own to St. Catharines.
Writing in 1851, W.H. Smith noted the decline, observing that Niagara “was once a place of considerable business, but since the formation of the Welland Canal, St. Catharine’s being the more critically situated, has absorbed its trade and thrown it completely in the shade…. The Niagara Harbour and Dock Company formerly did a large business and many first class vessels have been built here … however from some cause of other affairs did not prosper with them and the whole concern was sold by the sheriff.”17 Smith did appreciate the tourist potential of the site: “[Niagara] is airily situated and is a pleasant summer residence frequented during the summer season by families having spare time and spare money by health seekers and hypochondriacs.”18 But most of Niagara’s tourist prosperity was to materialize in the future.
Then, as if the stagnating village needed another blow, in 1862, ratepayers of the newly created Lincoln County chose St. Catharines over Niagara as the site of the new county seat, and the court house was downgraded to town hall. In the years that followed, Niagara’s population plunged from more than three thousand to nearly one third of that.
But with its idyllic location at the mouth of the Niagara River, and its distance from the more prosperous but smokier growing cities, Niagara began to grow its tourist sector. Using money it received in compensation for losing the county seat, the town helped finance the building of the elegant Queen’s Royal Hotel, as well as a golf course on the vacant grounds around the now abandoned Fort Mississauga. The majestic Prince of Wales Hotel made its appearance in 1882 on the main street close to the Michigan Central train station. Originally it was known by the less regal name Long’s Hotel, and later The Arcade. Its princely re-appellation did not come until 1901, when the Duke of York, who very shortly would become the Prince of Wales, bestowed upon it its new name. The hotel’s three-storey corner mansard dormer is one of the town’s iconic images today.
In 1878 the Niagara Navigation Company launched steamships like the Chippewa, the Corona, and the Cibola to carry tourists between Toronto and Niagara. A new invasion from the United States began, but this time to see the sites. The Michigan Central Railway, which by this time was running the old Erie and Ontario line, had created a station stop overlooking Niagara Falls, and it, too, was drawing tourists into Niagara. Around this time, the town published a brochure promoting itself as a peaceful summer getaway, with somewhat more relaxed bylaws. By 1894, the St. Catharines and Niagara Central Railway was operating a daily interurban electrical train service into the town. Because its rails ran along the streets, no evidence survives of that long abandoned line.
In the 1880s there arrived yet another invasion of tourists: the Chautauquans. The Chautauqua movement was started in upper New York State, on the shores of Chautauqua Lake, in 1874 (although, as a later chapter will reveal, its real roots lay in Ontario). In an era before cinema and radio, Chautauqua provided a form of cultural entertainment. A community grew on the shores of the lake, with theatres, hotels, and several streets of elegant homes. In 1887, the Chautauquans established a Niagara assembly on the shores of Lake Ontario, just north of the town of Niagara. Here they built the three-storey Chautauqua Hotel, a four-thousand-seat amphitheatre, and a circular road lined with cottages. Although many tourists travelled from Toronto to the Chautauqua dock by steamer, the railway added its own spur line to the grounds. Activities at Chautauqua were many and varied. Far from being a religious camp, Chautauqua treated visitors to poetry, lectures, music, and theatre. But the Niagara assembly never really gained a sound financial footing. In 1909 the hotel burned, and by the 1920s the land was being subdivided for housing.
Following the end of the First World War, the auto age slowly began to arrive, and Niagara’s distinctiveness as a summer resort began to lose ground to the lakes and woods of today’s cottage country. Little remains of Niagara’s Chautauqua. Its distinctive street pattern radiates out from its circular configuration, while street names recall many of the writers and philosophers who attracted the early crowds — Wilberforce, Wycliffe, and Wesley, to name a few. Chautauqua Amphitheatre Circle defines the location of the theatre, the focus for their riveting lectures. Few of the original cottages have survived, most replaced or radically altered. One which has retained its Chautauqua ambience is the Lakeview Bed and Breakfast, built in 1879 and located at 490 Niagara Boulevard. And, partly in deference to its theatrical origins and partly due to its popularity with Shaw Festival actors, the community has now earned the nickname “Camp Shaw.”
Despite its many makeovers and economic ups and downs, the streets of Niagara-on-the-Lake (finally named as such in 1880 in order to distinguish it from the postal address of Niagara Falls) reveal its varied heritage. Many grand homes still survive from the post-1812 years. This is thanks in large part to a concerted effort by restoration architect Peter John Stokes, who authored the book Old Niagara on the Lake, published in 1971. He was spurred on by the heritage passions of such locals as Kathleen Drope and Carl Banke.
A few years earlier, in 1962, a local lawyer named Brian Doherty had launched the Shaw Festival using the spare space in the old town hall as its first theatre. Built to house the county offices, its role was reduced to that of town hall when the county seat went to the hated rival, St. Catharines, instead. Today it is the popular Court House Theatre and the main street’s most prominent structure.
At the corner of King and Queen stands Ontario’s oldest apothecary. Built in 1820, it is now maintained as a 1860s-era drug store museum by the Ontario Pharmacists Association. Kitty-corner to it, the elegant Prince of Wales Hotel, an iconic landmark, has been much extended. A few blocks away, the Pillar and Post Hotel occupies the shell of a one-time canning factory. The Oban Inn, near Front and Simcoe, was originally built as a private home by the town’s first ship-owner. Moffat’s Inn on Front Street was owned by Richard Moffat, and was one of twenty-eight taverns operating in the town during the bustling 1830s. One of Ontario’s oldest Anglican churches, St. Marks, although refurbished after the 1812 war, was originally built in 1791 and stands on Byron Street. The Olde Angel Inn was established in 1789 and rebuilt in 1816 after it was burnt by the Americans during the War of 1812. Located at 224 Regent Street, it is considered Ontario’s oldest operating inn.
Many black settlers who had escaped servitude south of the border, or had arrived as slaves before Britain abolished the slave trade, took up residence in Niagara. A typical example of one of their early dwellings, with its simple two-room layout, still stands at Gate and Johnson streets. In stark contrast, the rambling Victorian-style mansion at 177 King Street was built in 1886 by merchant Sam Rowley for his black wife, Fanny Rose.
Of all the historic streets in Niagara, perhaps one of the most significant is Prideaux. Several houses here were among the first to have been rebuilt after the destruction of the town by the Americans — some as early as 1815.
In contrast, the historic wharf area is much changed, with little to remind the visitor that the Michigan Central’s tracks once ran beside a wharf-side station. Amid the new condos and wharf-side development, the King George III Inn is a reminder of the location’s key role as a transportation hub. The downtown station on King Street also still stands, though altered somewhat by the addition of a small faux tower.
The most prominent of the military structures in the area is the much touted Fort George. Although a key outpost during the War of 1812, it was never completely rebuilt after its destruction by the Americans. Today’s recreation came about as a Depression-era make-work project. Another military site, Navy Hall, originally consisted of five separate buildings built by the British as early as 1765. Destroyed by the Americans during their rampage through the town, Navy Hall was reconstructed after the war. Today, only one of those buildings still stands, and is now used for private functions. It lies on Ricardo Street, at the east end of the town, opposite Fort George.
Faring somewhat better is the complex known as Butler’s Barracks, located at the corner of King and John streets. These five structures stand on what is known as the Commons, and today house the museum of the Lincoln and Welland Regiment, which was descended from the renowned Butler’s Rangers.
The most haunting and original of the town’s military buildings is the ghostly ruin of Fort Mississauga. Following its reconstruction by the British after 1812, it saw military service off and on until 1872, when it was finally abandoned. Today the ruins have been stabilized by Parks Canada. A trail leads through the golf course, marked by historic interpretive plaques. Its rival across the river, Fort Niagara, can be clearly seen from the parapets, though the only missiles hurled at it today are those of the golfers.
Twelve Mile Creek: Port Dalhousie
Before rail lines breached the peninsula, two main routes led from Niagara to Ancaster and the head of the lake. The more popular followed the old raised beaches at the foot of the Niagara Escarpment, left behind by the receding waters of Lake Iroquois. This alignment was higher and drier, allowing easier travel by stage or foot. Another route followed the shore of the lake itself.
Although shorter, it was more difficult, as the many river and creek mouths to be crossed proved time-consuming. But this crude trail led to the naming of those same waterways. Quite simply, the rivers were named based on the distance they were from the mouth of the Niagara River. A short distance from Niagara, Four Mile Creek was the site of an early mill operation.
The first of the Loyalists to arrive at the mouth of Twelve Mile Creek were Peter Broeck and Lieutenant Benjamin Pawling. In 1821, Pawling founded a town site he called Dalhousie, for then governor general, the Earl of Dalhousie. The site also attracted William Hamilton Merritt, who saw the potential for an all-Canadian canal to link Lake Ontario with the upper lakes. The completion of the Erie Canal linking New York with Lake Erie led Canadians to see the need for an all-Canadian route from the Atlantic seaboard to their ports on Lakes Erie and Huron, as well as those on the upper lakes.
But the high cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment posed an engineering nightmare. The first thought was to dig a canal along Twelve Mile Creek to the base of the huge cliff, and from there drag the boats up by means of an incline railway. But Merritt convinced the government that the best route lay in a canal that mounted the escarpment by a series of locks, and then connected with the Welland River, thence to the Niagara River at Chippewa.
In 1824, the canal’s president, George Keefer, turned the sod at Allanburg, and on November 30, 1829, the first two schooners sailed through the canal and into the Niagara River. Because there was insufficient water in the watershed to operate the canal effectively, more was needed, and a feeder canal was opened to Port Maitland to draw the water from the Grand River. However, because of the strong currents on the Niagara River and the shallow draft of the feeder canal, a third channel had to be dug, this one directly from Port Robinson to Port Colborne, right on Lake Erie.
But with forty locks, and ships increasing in size, the first Welland Canal was soon obsolete. A second was started. Completed in 1851, it followed the same route as the first, but the number of locks was reduced to twenty-seven, they were lengthened and deepened, and most wooden locks were replaced with stone ones. The success of the canal brought a boom to St. Catharines, but a decline for places like Niagara and Queenston. New towns sprang into existence along the route, such as Port Robinson at the old junction of the first canal and the Welland River, and Port Colborne and Port Dalhousie as the Lake Erie and Lake Ontario termini respectively.
The Thorold and Port Dalhousie Railway rolled into town in 1853, building its facilities on the east side of the harbour. This line later became part of the Welland Railway and then the Grand Trunk. The east side of the harbour was nicknamed the “Michigan Side” due to the annual winter migration of the tow boys — men who guided the horses that towed the sailboats through the canal to the lumber camps of that state. Even today the beach is known as Michigan Beach.
By 1866, the Muir brothers were operating a permanent dry dock at the north end of Martindale Pond, a business which survived for nearly a century. But many of the new locks remained inadequate, and so between 1873 and 1887 they were doubled in size, while a more direct route between Port Dalhousie and Allanburg was excavated. By 1907, it was evident that this one, too, was outdated, and yet a fourth canal was begun. Interrupted by the war, the new waterway opened in 1932. Now constructed of concrete, the locks were reduced to a mere seven, with a new Lake Ontario entrance at Port Weller. It is this canal (with another bypass at Welland opened in 1972) that today accommodates some of the world’s largest lake and ocean freighters.
The success of the canal meant both boom and bust for Port Dalhousie. With the opening of the first canal, the mouth of Twelve Mile Creek became an overnight bonanza town, with a string of bars and taverns lining the lock side. Sailors, longshoremen, and tow boys all crowded into the smoky nighteries, often tumbling out onto the streets and filling the night air with the sounds of drunken brawling. It was little wonder then that in 1845 a small stone jail was built close by. Guests were invited to share two cramped cells and, if they became cold, would be allowed to stoke the fire in the single wood-burning stove.
When the swamp at the mouth of Twelve Mile Creek was filled in, a recreational park was opened, attracting tourists from Hamilton and Toronto. As early as 1884, the paddlewheel steamer Empress of India began carrying visitors to the park. In 1902, the Niagara, St. Catharines and Toronto Railway took over operations, with the ships Northumberland and Dalhousie City plying between the park and Toronto.
In 1903, Martindale Pond, originally a part of the first two canals, became the site of the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta. A branch of the Welland Railway ended at a station on the east side of the canal, while streetcars from the Niagara, St. Catharines and Toronto Railway also brought fun-seekers to the beach. Prohibition did not put a serious damper on the port’s nightlife. Despite the restrictions of the Ontario Temperance Act, beer managed to make its way to the town on boats from Quebec. The park continued to expand, with rides, a water slide, a dance pavilion, and, in 1921, the arrival of a merry-go-round from Hanlan’s Point in Toronto. The pavilion featured dance bands such as the Andy Spinosa Band. By the 1930s, nearly three hundred thousand visitors were arriving by boat each year, and radio station CKTB was regularly broadcasting lacrosse games from the park.
The relocation of the canal entrance to Port Weller had brought a slump in the economy of the port, and the years following the Second World War hurt the park, which, along with the boats, was being operated by the Canada Steamship Company (CSC). Steamers continued to call until a deadly fire on the Noronic in Toronto Harbour in 1949 tightened safety standards for the lake-passenger ships. The cross-lake traffic died out, and Canadian National (CN), then owner of the CSC, decided to get out of the amusement park business altogether. In 1969 the park was closed and the rides sold; only the carousel and dance hall remained (the dance hall burned in 1974).
Port Dalhousie’s historic carousel is the sole survivor of the site’s days as an amusement park.
With considerable foresight, the St. Catharines council bought the property and, in 1978, declared the carousel a heritage site. By then the Queen Elizabeth Highway between Toronto and Fort Erie was bringing a new wave of tourists. St. Catharines’ urban growth soon engulfed the port, and it gained new life as both a popular summer playground and an historic lakeside attraction. Today, sleek yachts crowd into the harbour and beery laughter fills the bars and patios on the warm summer nights.
Despite the urban growth around it, Port Dalhousie remains a heritage treasure trove. For starters, two historic locks remain. Lock number one from the second canal is part of a park on Lakeport Road, the main street along the canal, while lock number one from the third canal lies farther east on Lakeport Road where a lock master’s shanty has also been preserved.
Several of the early hotels still stand on the portside streets, including the Port Mansion at 12 Lakeport Road, built in 1860, and the Non-Such Hotel, built in 1862, located at 26 Lakeport Road. Near the corner of Lock and Main streets are the Lakeside Hotel, built in the 1890s as the Austin House, and the Lion Tavern, dating from 1877 and originally known as the Wellington House.
The little stone jail also survives, just around the corner from the drinking establishments — but today it belongs to one of them. The lockup is considered to be the second smallest establishment of its kind in North America. Measuring just 4.6 by 5.8 metres, it is just a few centimetres larger than the jail at Rodney, in southwestern Ontario, which measures 4.5 by 5.4 metres.19
Martindale Pond was once the site of the Muir Brothers Dry Docks and Shipyard. The solitary reminder of that operation is the Dalhousie House, built in 1850, and now a community hall and seniors centre. A pair of small historic lighthouses still blink on and off, guiding ships in the hours of darkness. The outer light was constructed in 1879, the inner light in 1898. But of all the historic structures to see in Port Dalhousie, the most sought-after is the old-time carousel. Built in 1898 by the I.D. Loof Company of Rhode Island, it was restored in the 1970s and still offers rides for just a nickel.
Despite being Port Dalhousie’s successor, Port Weller offers a minimal amount of heritage. A residential road along the east side of the canal leads to a small beach where the large ships can be seen entering the canal. A solid lift bridge carries the traffic across the canal, except during those lengthy intervals when it is raised to allow the massive freighters to inch through. (The best viewing spot for ship-watching is at the Lock Three Museum and viewing platform in St. Catharines.) The Port Weller Dry Dock on the south side of the bridge remains a busy operation, and at any time a massive vessel may lie high and dry while undergoing repairs or maintenance.
In 1931, a lighthouse and keeper’s dwelling were built to guide ships into the new canal. Here, on the west side of the entrance, the Department of the Marine constructed a simple, unadorned concrete building, sturdy enough to withstand the fiercest of gales, with a twenty-nine-metre-tall steel frame light. Despite a seven-kilometre road connection, the location was sufficiently remote that the lighthouse keeper’s wife began operating a ham radio connection. In 1953, a more commodious and modern-looking house was added for the keeper. Finally, in 1970, the newer house was removed and the old light tower torn down, keepers no longer needed to tend the new automated beacon. The site is no longer accessible to the public, but the older house is now being put to good use by the Canadian Coast Guard as a search-and-rescue station.
Twenty Mile Creek: Jordan Harbour
The village of Jordan began as a mill town adjacent to a steep gully on Twenty Mile Creek. The creek flowed into Lake Ontario through a wide lagoon, which, although shallow, could accommodate small vessels. In was here, in 1833, that the Louth Harbour Company (Louth was the name of the township in which Jordan developed) built 160 metres of piers. Shipments of lumber, flour, and clothing originated at the mills of Glen Elgin, a village located upstream where the creek tumbled over the brink of the escarpment. Shipments from Jordan Harbour also included ships’ masts and tan bark, and the port enjoyed a short-lived shipbuilding industry. In 1853, the Great Western Railway extended a long trestle across the creek, effectively blocking the shipments from Glen Elgin.
The railway did, however, bring a new era to the little community. The Jordan Harbour Company added a large wharf on the east side of the bay in 1897, while the government dredged the sand spit covering the mouth. The area’s tender fruit crops were loaded onto freight cars, destined for grocery stores in Hamilton and Toronto. A few fishing vessels sailed from the protected lagoon. A small street network was laid out around the station, and a new community grew — Jordan Station. By 1898 the sand beach along the spit had attracted a community of cottagers. A drawbridge allowed traffic to cross the harbour until 1939, when the four lanes of the QEW ended the shipping era for Jordan Harbour. As the highway was widened, the cottages were removed. Two motels and a small mall now line the lakeshore. Jordan Station remains a residential community, and although trains no longer call, the attractive wooden station was rescued from the CNR’s wrecking crews and is now a private home close to its original site.
The original mill village of Jordan has become a popular stop on the Niagara wine route and boasts a main street of new boutiques. Glen Elgin, later renamed Balls Falls, fell silent and is now a ghost town within the Balls Falls Conservation Area. But a ghostly sight of a different kind greets motorists racing along the QEW. It is the gaunt remains of a listing and rusting “tall ship.”
The strange tale begins on the St. Lawrence in 1914, when Le Progress was launched as a ferry. In 1991 it was rebuilt to resemble La Grande Hermine, the sailing ship used in 1553 by explorer Jacques Cartier to make his way across the Atlantic and up the St. Lawrence River. To avoid allegedly unpaid dockage fees on the St. Lawrence, the ship was towed to Jordan Harbour in 1997 and, six years later, became a victim of arson. Its owner now deceased, it remains a mystery at this writing as to just how long this landmark will remain in its current location.20
Forty Mile Creek: Grimsby Beach
While the world-renowned and historic Chautauqua Movement is associated with the lake of the same name in upper New York State, its roots lie firmly in Canadian soil with a Methodist camp on the shores of Lake Ontario.
In 1846, John Bowslaugh, a devout Methodist, dedicated a lakeside parcel from his extensive property east of Grimsby as a Temperance meeting ground. For the next thirteen years, the annual meetings occurred in different sites, but by 1859 Bowslaugh’s land had become a permanent Methodist camp. For several years, followers sat and listened to lectures held in tents, and swam in the inviting waters of the nearby beach. Finally, in 1874, the Ontario Methodist Campground Company was formed, and the site became known as Grimsby Park. The company divided the land into fifty lots, and a community of decorative cottages grew up on them. These otherwise simple buildings became known for their elaborate fretwork façades.
In 1876 a dock was built and the Great Western Railway added a stop at the park entrance. Two hotels, The Lake View House and The Park House, provided accommodation for those coming on short visits. Camp rules prohibited alcohol and foul language, and lights were to be out by 10:30. Any scofflaws might be detained by the camp constable and incarcerated in a lockup below The Park House Hotel.
In 1888 an elaborate temple replaced the outdoor speaker’s stand in Grimsby Park, a building thirty-seven metres in diameter with a dome that soared thirty metres high above. Unfortunately, the resonance within such a shape made the speakers’ words nearly unintelligible. By the 1890s the rules were relaxed, and campers were entertained by fireworks, concerts, recitals, and a new device known as the stereopticon.
By 1912, the Grimsby Company was bankrupt and had been purchased by Henry Wylie. He had a decidedly non-Methodist vision for the property and effectively turned it into an amusement park. Eliminating most of the constraining rules of the Methodist days, he installed two carousels, a miniature railway, and a shooting gallery, as well as a “Figure 8” roller coaster. Following Wylie’s death in 1916, the park was bought by Canada Steamship Lines, which also operated other parks such as Wabasso in Burlington and Lakeside in Port Dalhousie.
But as the buildings aged, fires began to take their toll. In 1914, thirty-four of the tiny wooden cottages were destroyed, along with the roller coaster and The Park House. Just four years later, the Lake View House Hotel was also consumed. In 1922 the rotting temple hall was demolished, and in 1927 another thirty cottages went up in flames. But despite the dwindling attendance and the disappearance of most of the park’s attractions, the band played on, and the dance hall stayed open through the Depression.
The last grand addition to the park was in 1939 when a new stone-and-wood entrance to the grounds was erected in honour of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Ontario. Ironically, that was the same year that the monarch opened the QEW, a route that took over much of the park property. Soon after, the lots were sold off to the cottage occupants, and the community became a year-round suburb of Grimsby.
Despite the overwhelmingly suburban nature of today’s Grimsby Park, a visit to the site is like a visit to another era. The tiny streets are lined with many of the elaborately fretted little cottages, the stone section of the entrance still stands, a cairn sits in “Auditorium Circle,” and the bell that once called worshippers rests in a parkette on Fair Avenue. By the water’s edge, Grimsby Park offers a shady respite from summer’s heat, as it did many years before, while down on the lake, traces of the pier remain, buried now under more recent fill.
The bell from the Grimsby Beach meeting ground is preserved in a park surrounded by camp cottages.
The village of Grimsby was once quite separate from the Methodist Camp at Grimsby Beach. It began to grow as a mill town on the banks of Forty Mile Creek. The first settler on the Forty was said to be a Captain Hendrick Nelles, whose son Robert built the area’s first mills on the creek. The sites lay along the St. Catharines Road, inland from the lake. In 1846, William H. Smith would describe Grimsby as “beautifully situated on the St. Catharines Road … in the midst of some very fine scenery…. During the summer it is a favourite destination of pleasure seekers from Hamilton.”21
A harbour was developed where the creek flowed into the lake and where schooners called at the wharves to carry off such products as lumber and wheat. When the Great Western Railway built its line closer to the main road, business at the harbour decreased. Grimsby still boasts a powerhouse from this era, located on the lake along with the remains of the wharf. A busy marina now occupies most of the one-time harbour. Although the picturesque station built by the Grand Trunk in the 1890s burned a decade ago, the original Great Western station still stands close to the track, now a private business operation.
But it was the Nelles family who dominated much of Grimsby’s early history, and much remains of their legacy. At 126 Main Street West the grand home built by Robert Nelles between 1788 and 1798 still survives. Other Nelles family homes are also still standing — the one at 139 Lake Road, known as the “Hermitage” was built by Robert’s brother William in 1800, while William’s son Adolphus built “Lake Lawn” in 1846, found today at 376 Nelles Road North.
