From Queenston to Kingston. Ron Brown
Sunnyside?
Old York
Toronto’s Islands
The Port of Toronto
The Eastern Beach(es)
The View from Here: Atop Scarborough’s Towering Bluffs
Chapter 5: The Ghost Ports and the “Newports”
Port Union
Rosebank
Dunbarton/Fairport
Ajax
Port Whitby
Camp X: Birthplace of Bond?
Port Oshawa
Port Darlington
Bond Head
Port Granby
Newtonville Station
Wesleyville
Port Britain
Port Hope
Cobourg
Lakeport
Gosport
Presqu’ile Point
Chapter 6: ’Round the Bay: The Ports of the Bay of Quinte
Trenton
Belleville
Point Anne Ghost Town
Shannonville
Deseronto
Napanee
Chapter 7: The Bath Road: A Loyalist Trail
Adolphustown
Bath
Amherst Island
Chapter 8: Quinte’s Isle: The Tranquility of Prince Edward County
Carrying Place
The Murray Canal
Wellers Bay
Consecon
Wellington
Beneath the Dunes: Sandbanks
The Wild South Coast
The Rum-Runners of Main Duck Island
Point Traverse
South Bay
Milford
Port Milford Ghost Town
Black River Bridge
Waupoos/Waupoos Island
Prinyers Cove
Glenora
Picton
Green Point
Northport
Demorestville
Big Island
Massassauga Point
Rednersville
Chapter 9: The Old Stones of Kingston
Kingston
Portsmouth
Barriefield
Epilogue: If You Go
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
The author wishes to acknowledge the helpful staff at Ontario’s many fine archives and museums. Archivists and curators at the facilities in Napanee, Archives Ontario, the City of Toronto Archives, and the Toronto Reference Library provided excellent service. I would, however, like to single out the staff at the Oshawa Community Archives and Museum and at the County of Prince Edward Archives for their generous assistance in this project. The staff at the Ministry of Natural Resources at Glenora and the Presqu’ile Point Provincial Park were also generous with their time and resources. Thanks to them as well. Many fine archival images are available on a series of excellent websites. The Niagara Public Library, the Queen’s University Archives, and in particular the website for the tiny community of Deseronto, which, despite its small size, has one of the finer archival websites online. To my family, my wife June, thanks for your patience with my various absences while prowling the shores of this unusual and historic lake. Finally, I am most grateful to my editor, Jane Gibson of Natural Heritage Books, and copy editor, Allison Hirst of the Dundurn Group, for unearthing and rectifying my various grammatical slip-ups. Any errors in content are strictly mine.
IntroductionThe Shaping of the Lake
Lake Ontario’s shoreline is not old. In geological time it is but a newcomer. Exactly what the land looked like before the last ice age is anyone’s guess, but it was after the last great ice sheet finally trickled away that today’s lake began to take shape.
For about two hundred thousand years, massive glaciers moved back and forth over the land that is now Ontario, gouging gullies and depositing mounds of sand and gravel. As the ice began to melt, around twenty thousand years ago, the waters pooled behind the ice, creating lakes of varying shapes and levels. The earliest postglacial lakes formed to the western end of what is now Ontario, draining in a southwesterly direction. Later, as the ice continued to retreat northeast, the lakes found another outlet, and drained southerly through the Mohawk Valley of New York. At this time, the body of water that would one day become Lake Ontario, what geologists call Lake Iroquois, began to form. Due to the ice dam to the east, its level was much higher than Lake Ontario is today.
While at that level, the lake washed into glacial deposits, leaving behind a series of shore bluffs that today stand high and dry. As the ice sheet shifted from the east end of the lake, the water found a new outlet — down the St. Lawrence River — resulting in the lowering of the lake level. The land, suppressed from the weight of the ice sheet, remained low, and ocean waters moved into the area of today’s Brockville, bringing with them marine life. (The discovery of whale bones in these oceanic deposits gave rise to a myth of whales in Lake Ontario.)
When the ice left for good, the east end of the lake, now freed from that weight, rebounded, raising the levels at the western end of the lake and flooding existing river mouths. This inflow created lagoons along the shoreline that provided shelter for aboriginal villages, and later for the schooners and small boats of the early settlers. By then, Lake Ontario had assumed the configuration that it retains today — 311 kilometres long