Читать книгу The Lake Erie Shore - Ron Brown - Страница 13
ОглавлениеDuring the French occupation of Canada, little was happening west of Montreal. This was a time when the government of New France was trying to solidify its trading relationships with the northern tribes such as the Ottawa and the Ojibwa and the southern tribes such as the aggressive Iroquois. Their only built presence in southwestern Ontario were Fort Frontenac at Kingston, Fort Niagara on the south shore of Lake Ontario with its opposite number, Fort Rouille on the site of today’s Toronto, while Fort Detroit guarded the entrance to the Detroit River. It was only in this latter location that the government granted lands to French settlers. Their long-lot pattern of farms and their place names survive to this day both within Windsor and throughout the surrounding rural areas of Essex County.
Following the Treaty of Paris, which in 1763 ended of the Seven Years’ War (or the French and Indian War, as it was known in North America) between England and France, Britain assumed control over what is today Ontario. During the postwar period the shores of Lake Erie remained quiet. But the American Revolution was soon flaring, and those who had remained loyal to Britain were forced to flee their American homes. As compensation, Britain granted land in New Brunswick and Ontario to those refugees known as United Empire Loyalists. While the first refugees took up their land grants in eastern Ontario in the 1780s, farm lots were being surveyed along the shores of Lake Erie as early as the 1790s. In 1784, Tyendaga chief Joseph Brant was granted all the land along the banks of the Grand River, ten kilometres back, from its mouth at Port Maitland to its source near present-day Dundalk.
But the military presence was never far away. Fort Malden was built between 1796 and 1799 (and known at first as Fort Amherstburg) at the western end of the lake to guard the entrance to the Detroit River, and in 1764, the first Fort Erie had been built to guard the Niagara River on the east. In between, naval reserves were laid out at Port Maitland, Point Pelee, and Turkey Point, where a fort known as Fort Norfolk was started, but hostilities ended before it was completed. But, even as a handful of squatters began to move into such accessible lands as those on Long Point and Point Pelee, the lakeshore’s first legitimate settlement scheme was about to unfold.
In 1792, when Colonel John Graves Simcoe arrived in Upper Canada to assume his new duties as governor at Newark (today’s Niagara-on-the-Lake, a capital which he soon moved to York), he had with him his private secretary, Lieutenant Thomas Talbot. In 1803, Talbot was granted the authority to issue land grants to prospective settlers in the area east of today’s Port Rowan. To help them settle, Talbot ordered the laying out of a road that would extend from Talbotville Royal (today’s St. Thomas) to near Point aux Pins (Rondeau), near the lake. Much of that route to this day is known as the “Talbot Road.”
Dressed in period uniforms, the troop at Fort Malden fires off a round, as they might have during the War of 1812.
Talbot was known for being particular as to whom he granted the land. While he rejected many on a whim, he was also considered generous in other ways. He spent his own money to assist many to begin their new lives, would marry them, christen their babies, and conclude his transactions with the passing of a whisky bottle. Still, a parliamentary report in 1834 would raise questions about what happened to the moneys he received for settling the vast tract.
But it was the amount of land that he received that would guarantee his wealth, namely sixty hectares for every twenty hectares he succeeded in granting. By 1820 it was estimated he had acquired fourteen thousand hectares for himself. 1 Of course, not everyone waited for Talbot to show up for their appointment. United Empire Loyalists had begun showing up as early as the 1780s.
They moved along the shoreline and up the small rivers and streams to begin their life in the new land. When water power permitted they threw together first sawmills, and then gristmills. Schooners and skiffs crowded into the little coves and inlets. At first industry was very local, supplying the basic needs of the pioneering communities before they expanded enough to consider exporting.
As the settlements grew, the first exports were raw materials such as gypsum, which were barged from mines on the lower Grand River and transshipped to markets by way of Dunnville and Port Maitland. From the naval reserves, pines tall and straight were sent off to England and the burgeoning Great Lakes shipyards for use as ships’ masts. The main lumber export from the shores of Lake Erie, however, consisted of oak, harvested from the lush Carolinian forests and the open oak savannahs, while red cedar from Pelee Island and Point Pelee was popular with the military and used at Fort Malden.
Fishing, which today has become one of the lake’s most famous industries, began with local fishermen who simply used small rowboats, known as “punters,” from which they would attach pound nets to stakes driven into the shallow waters, and sold their product locally only. Following the arrival of the railways, commercial fishing became centralized in larger ports, while the variety and quantity of fish species turned this freshwater fishing fleet into the world’s largest.
Although the lake and the Grand River remained the main thoroughfares for travellers, crude roads also began to appear. Toll roads were extended from London to Port Stanley and from Chatham to Shrewsbury, while the legendary plank road was opened between Hamilton and Port Dover. Thomas Talbot’s early Talbot Road already linked St. Thomas with Rondeau.
The war of 1812 halted economic growth in the little lake settlements. Despite early victories at Fort Detroit, the British began to suffer a series of setbacks. At Put-in Bay, near Sandusky, Ohio, despite superior odds, they lost a strategic naval battle. Then, in May 1814, in response to the sacking and burning of Buffalo and Lewiston, American Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell landed with a force of eight hundred men near Port Dover. After allowing the women to carry off their movable items, his soldiers put the torch to the houses, mills, and barns. The hogs were butchered and the meat carried off. The next morning the fleet appeared off Port Ryerse, where the invaders destroyed the mills there and at Finch’s Mills (now Fishers Glen).
Later that year, General Duncan McArthur led a force of mounted American riflemen from Detroit along the shore of the lake, burning nearly everything in his path. Strangely, the only mills to escape his wrath were the Backhouse mill north of Port Rowan, and Tisdale’s mill at Vittoria — the latter, because, it is suggested that McArthur, a Mason, wished to spare the community of Masons in the area the hardship of losing their vital mill. While the Vittoria mill is now gone, the Backus mill (as it is now called) still rests on its original site and continues to produce flour using the power from its water wheel.
As part of the Backus Heritage Village, the mill also shares the grounds with other heritage structures, as well as summertime campers and picnickers. Run by the Long Point Conservation Authority, the Backus Heritage Village contains more than thirty heritage features that hearken back to pioneer times, including a home built by the Backus family in 1850, as well as a log cabin, bake oven, stump puller, sawmill, and ice house, most brought in from other locations. An ancient cottonwood tree, a Carolinian species, measures thirty metres tall and more than six metres in circumference.
McArthur’s devastation of 1814 was complete. From the Detroit River to the Grand, villages, mills, and farms lay in ruin. But the resurrection of the Lake Erie shore would soon begin.
An Industrial Evolution
Following the war, growth began to recur. Homes and mills were rebuilt from scratch. Fields were enlarged and new industries began to appear. Shipping from the little ports increased significantly when in 1825 the Erie Canal was blasted through the rocks of North Tonawanda and into the Niagara River north of Buffalo. This provided not only a direct link between Lake Erie and the Atlantic, but through the Oswego Canal to Lake Ontario, as well.2 Still, the small size of the canal’s locks limited the potential for more shipping. But, in 1833, the Welland Canal opened between Port Dalhousie and Port Colborne with much larger locks.
In 1835, the Grand River Canal facilitated the movement of gypsum, lumber, and barley from the Grand River watershed through Dunnville and Port Maitland, and gave rise to the dozen towns and villages that clustered around the lock stations and shipping docks along the river.3
Along the lakeshore, to help encourage exports, the government gave financial encouragement for local landowners to build private wharfs. Often lacking a protective harbour, the wharfs gave rise to a string of now-forgotten little ports with names like Union, Clearville, Port Glasgow, and many that bore only the names of their operators.
South of the border, in the United States, a major population move was under way. Having long suffered under the burden of slavery, American abolitionists, aided by many in Canada, launched the “Underground Railroad.” By following a designated route, and resting in safe houses, many fugitive slaves made their way into Canada, with the shore of Lake Erie offering close haven.
The docks at Dunnville shown here when ships still called, now lie beneath concrete and asphalt.
Built in 1846, Lock Number 27 marks the entrance of the feeder canal from Stromness into Lake Erie. It made shipment up the Grand River easier.
Gathering in safe communities on the south shore of the lake, they crossed and settled, usually only temporarily, at Point Pelee, Long Point, Fort Erie, and ports like Shrewsbury, Colchester, Port Burwell, Port Rowan, and Port Stanley. Few, however, remained in these places. After the Civil War in the United States ended in 1865, many returned to family, friends, and a more familiar climate. Others made their way to larger towns and cities where they established themselves, many taking jobs on the growing network of rail lines.
Lake Erie’s first major railway line was hammered into the ground in 1854. An American enterprise intended to supply Buffalo with shipments from Lake Huron, the Buffalo and Lake Huron Railway (B&LH) extended from Fort Erie, through Dunnville, Brantford, and Stratford, and on to the shores of Lake Huron at Goderich. It would mark the beginning of a railway era that would dramatically alter the face of the Lake Erie shore.
Soon, more iron links made their way to the shores of the lake. The year before the B&LH opened, the London and Port Stanley Railway (L&PS) began hauling grain and lumber along a short section of track between those two communities. After the Canada Southern (CSR) was completed across the southwestern peninsula in 1873 (essentially an American shortcut between Buffalo and Detroit), branch lines crept southward toward the lake to places like Erieau, Port Rowan, and Port Burwell.
Port Rowan began to develop after the railway arrived.
Port Dover boomed with the arrival of the Hamilton and Northwestern Railway (H&NW), a resource line that extended through Hamilton and Allandale (Barrie), and on to the shores of Georgian Bay at Collingwood, while the Lake Erie and Northern Railway (LE&N) from Kitchener to Port Dover provided a second route for that community. Meanwhile, at the western end, Hiram Walker was creating a route from Windsor to Leamington to help bring raw material to his distillery at Walkerville.
By 1880, Walker’s steel rails had reached as far as Wheatley, as well. In fact, many of the lake’s ports were enjoying the vital rail links, including Erieau, Port Stanley, Port Burwell, Port Rowan, Port Dover, Port Maitland, Dunnville, and Fort Erie. Connecting these ports to vital American markets, car ferries began a long era of cross-lake shipping. Erieau, Port Stanley, Port Dover, and Port Maitland benefitted from their links with Ashtabula and Conneaut in Ohio on the American shore. Railcars would be shunted onto the large vessels carrying coal into Canada, and a variety of raw materials into the United States. It was a romantic era that would last well into the 1950s. (The tradition continues to this day with the Jiiman and the Pelee Islander offering the last cross-lake ferry service linking Leamington and Kingsville with Sandusky. This time, however, the “cars” are not railcars, but automobiles).
Railway car ferries shuttled between ports on the Canadian side and those on the American side.
A system of radial streetcar lines was emerging, as well, and for the first three decades of the twentieth century they operated to places like Kingsville, Leamington, Port Stanley, Erieau, and Port Colborne.
No industry benefitted more from the arrival of the rails than did fishing. The lake had long been well-known for its quantity and variety of fish such as blue pike, walleye, and whitefish. Natives gathered at places like Long Point for the bounty of the fish. Early on, local fishermen were able to fish close to shore and supply the nearby settlements with a plentiful supply using the simple hook-and-line technique. As settlements and markets grew, linen seine nets came into use as fishing boats grew ever larger. By the 1860s, the seine nets had been replaced by the more efficient “pound” nets, allowing the fishermen to cash in on the sudden increase in demand due to the American Civil War.
Punters, such as shown by the harbour at Port Rowan, were used in the early days of fishing on Lake Erie.
But the opening of the canals and the extension of the rail lines meant that fishing could now become an export industry. By the 1870s, the rowboats and skiffs were giving way to steam-powered tugs while methods changed from the local pound nets to trawling. Fishing boats became enclosed, allowing for longer trips and for sorting to take place right on deck. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, pound net licenses tripled from 260 to nearly 700 while gill net yardage increased five times from 300,000 to over 1.5 million. In 1915, more than 1,000 fishermen were fishing out of 425 boats.
The invention of the enclosed fishing tug, now in universal use on Lake Erie, helped make the lake’s fishery more efficient and more profitable.
Through the late 1800s, lake herring and blue pike were the dominant species. But the lake’s fish species faced many challenges: clearing of the land for farming, which altered the water tables and reduced habitat, and the entry of the deadly sea lamprey, an ocean-going predator that literally sucked the life out of any fish to which it attached itself, altered drastically the makeup of the fish stocks. By the 1950s the blue pike was extinct while walleye and whitefish had all but disappeared, leaving yellow perch and rainbow smelt to become the dominant species. Fishing grounds were shifting, as well. Boats in and west of Port Stanley hauled aboard more than 10 million kilograms of fish, while east of Port Stanley, once the lake’s most fertile fishing grounds, the haul was less than a quarter of that. And most of that remained at Port Dover, where the catch was almost entirely smelt. The fish most popular in local restaurants, yellow perch, comes from the tugs that operate out of Port Stanley and Erieau. Wheatley, however, has become the most prolific of the fishing harbours, bringing in more than twice the tonnage of any other port and a greater variety, as well. All told, Lake Erie’s eleven main fishing ports in 2007 boasted nearly two hundred commercial fishing license holders, a figure that ensures the lake’s title as the largest freshwater fishing fleet in the world.
A gas field is under way near Port Burwell, an often forgotten industry on the Lake Erie shore.
Not only did the railways usher in more industry, but a new type of lake user — the tourist. As the Great Lakes area became more urbanized, residents who were crowded into smoky, growing cities sought places to which they could escape. Soon, excursion trains were carrying the throngs to Lake Erie’s many sand beaches. Amusement parks sprang up nearly everywhere, some with their own short line trains with colourful names like the Sandfly Express and the Pegleg.
Crystal Beach and Erie Beach on the eastern end attracted Americans in particular, while those at Port Stanley and Port Burwell herded crowds from places like London, and Port Dover largely appealed to vacationers from Hamilton. Soon the Americans were buying up large stretches of shoreline for summer homes, creating private, often gated, communities with their own exclusive station stops.
While the western beaches were scarcer and farther from large urban centres, those at Rondeau, Point Pelee, and Leamington soon boasted hotels and campgrounds and cottages, as well.
Meanwhile, away from the shoreline, agriculture was evolving. By the late 1800s, the traditional mixed-farming economy of wheat and livestock was being replaced with more specialized agriculture. The fertile soils and the warm climates of the extreme southwest was spawning a busy vegetable-growing and greenhouse industry, in particular, tomatoes around Leamington. Tobacco-growing began in the Essex area around the early 1900s and found more fertile ground on the then-depleted sand plains of Norfolk County in the 1920s. Large tracts of marshlands in the Erieau, Turkey Point, and Point Pelee areas, and on Pelee Island, were drained for vegetable-growing.
But fishing, farming, and forestry were not the Erie shore’s only industries. A now-forgotten story is that of the oil and gas industry, which operated from 1903 and continues today with offshore rigs. Peat, too, proved the basis for a short-lived iron-making industry at Normandale, west of Port Dover, and for one of Canada’s largest peat-extraction industries near Port Colborne.
A New Day Dawns
As the pall of the Second World War receded, major changes began to sweep the Erie shore. This was heralded largely by the arrival of the auto age. While a few cars coughed along the dusty roads of the Erie shore as early as 1900, the postwar years ushered in an overwhelming alteration in lifestyle, industry, and transportation.
By the time the war ended, most of the radial streetcars had been shunted into scrapyards, and the tracks were lifted. A new Welland Canal, completed in the 1930s, was bringing ever-larger boats steaming into the lake. North America’s first limited-access freeway was opened by Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) in 1939, while two decades later the 401 (officially known as the MacDonald-Cartier Freeway) was speeding cars and trucks between Toronto and Windsor. Travellers were leaving the trains for the freedom of their own cars, and trucks began taking business away from rail freight. One by one, the rails to the lakes were removed. Today only the tracks to Fort Erie and Port Colborne remain, while the L&PS line has become a tourist line only. Many of the once-busy main lines are now recreational trails.
Then, in the late 1960s, the face of Lake Erie’s industry changed yet again. In an effort to decentralize the industrial sprawl plaguing Ontario’s large cities, the Ontario government assembled a large tract of land east of Port Dover, luring such heavy industries as Texaco Oil, Dofasco Steel, and Ontario Hydro. This once scenic and idyllic stretch of shore now resembles a gloomy industrial forest. Indeed, the hydro plant is considered to be Ontario’s single greatest polluter.
However, clean energy is beginning to dominate the landscape, as well. In an area west of Port Rowan, silhouetted against the sky, are the vast, whirling blades of the sixty wind turbines that make up the Houghton Wind Farm.
Today, condos and cottages clog the shoreline where the amusement parks once bustled. Small industries have moved away, and residents now commute to larger industries in places like Cambridge, St. Thomas, and London.
Even farming itself has changed again. As the demand for cigarettes has declined, the tobacco auction houses have closed and the back-breaking tobacco fields are gradually being replaced with such alternative crops as corn (for ethanol), ginseng, and peanuts, and the dilapidated rows of tobacco sheds now resemble miniature ghost towns. Increasing numbers of farms are converting to pick-your-own operations, and roadside markets line the shore roads. In 1972, the first of the high-bush blueberry farms opened, and that crop has now begun to dominate the roadside and pick-your-own markets.
The cross-lake car ferries have faded into the lake’s lore. While fishing remains a major industry, and is still the world’s largest freshwater fishing fleet, the focus has changed. While 211 fishing licenses are still issued for boats in eleven harbours, fish are increasingly sold to markets in Toronto and to a growing number of local restaurants. Buying fish fresh from the boats, or at the least in the dockside fish markets, is becoming a popular pastime with the tourist traffic.
Many of the cottages have been cleared from the more sensitive ecological areas, which have become popular destinations for nature-seeking tourists. Beaches are cleaner, and most are crowded during Lake Erie’s long, hot summers. The local bed-and-breakfast operations, and the renowned “quaintness” of the old ports are attracting ever more visitors. Indeed, Norfolk County specifically promotes its Lake Erie shoreline as “Ontario’s South Coast.”
But many other little communities have not benefitted from the busy roads and tourists trade. The schooners no longer call, the mills have long gone with no replacements, and their stores and hotels sit shuttered. Their heydays are only distant memories. These are the places of Lake Erie’s “ghost coast.”
