Terry Boyle's Discover Ontario 5-Book Bundle. Terry Boyle
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.
Oshawa, 1941. When gasoline was rationed, Sam McLaughlin set a gas-saving example by returning to the hay-fuelled McLaughlin carriage.
Author’s collection
The McLaughlins had obtained the rights to manufacture Chevrolet cars and formed the Chevrolet Motor Car Company of Canada in 1915. In 1918 the McLaughlin Motor Car Company of Canada was purchased by General Motors and incorporated as General Motors of Canada Limited, with R.S. McLaughlin as president.
Oshawa annexed part of East Whitby Township in 1922 and became an incorporated city two years later. A further annexation of part of the township took place in 1951. Two World Wars stimulated the expansion of Oshawa’s industries, and although the depression of the 1930s cancelled some of the growth, recovery was rapid.
It was during the Second World War that Oshawa became the site of a secret intelligence organization. In 1940 Sir William Stephenson, the founder of British Security Co-ordination, was sent to the United States by the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, to establish an intelligence network that would eventually encompass all of the western hemisphere. One of the initial Canadian projects was to purchase land in Oshawa and supervise the construction of buildings for a training centre. The place was known locally as Camp X, by the Canadian government as file 25-1-1, and by the British government as STS 103.
Camp X was the first secret agent training school in North America. It was designed to help the Americans and Canadians learn the art of espionage. For that reason it was built where easy access to the United States was possible: on the shores of Lake Ontario.
Camp X opened its doors to recruits just two days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. During the war years, Canada, the United States, and Britain trained secret agents in the art of clandestine warfare. Due to the extreme secrecy surrounding the 275-acre site, local residents of Whitby and Oshawa were unaware of these activities. Some local residents worked at the Camp, but they were sworn to secrecy.
One of the intelligence officers who attended the camp was Ian Fleming, and he is believed to have conceived the idea for his series of James Bond novels while stationed at the camp. Major Paul Dehn, a poet, musician, and lyricist, who was chief instructor at Camp X, used his talents to write propaganda. From his wartime experience he went on the write the screenplays of such famous films as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. The “Shanghai Buster,” William Ewart Fairbairn, invented the famous double-edged commando knife and taught Camp X recruits the art of silent killing. The 1976 international bestseller about Stephenson, A Man Called Intrepid, claimed that Camp X represented “the clenched fist” of all Allied secret operations in the Second World War.
The camp closed in 1946 and remained vacant for several years. All that remains is a small park by Lake Ontario, off Thickson Road, beside the Liquor Control Board of Ontario warehouse. The park is simply named Intrepid Park. In front of it is a short curving wall moulded in grey concrete and mounted with four flagpoles. Embedded in the wall is a bronze plaque.
Today, in 2011, Oshawa remains the home of General Motors of Canada. This company greatly assists in growing many smaller, related industries, who find a ready market in the GM corporation. The question arises, however, “How much longer will they last with gas and other energy crises?”
The cultural centre of the city is represented by three museums: the Henry House and the Robinson House museum are located at the bottom of Simcoe Street by Lake Ontario. The Canadian Automotive Museum is found on Simcoe Street near the downtown district. The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, situated next to city hall, represents the work of many well-known Canadian artists. Visitors to the city may also enjoy the recreational activities included in the more than 50 parks. Windfield Farms, Canada’s National Stud Farm, lies north of the city, as does Durham College of Applied Arts and Technology.
Oshawa’s main historic site, Parkwood, the estate of the late Colonel R.S. McLaughlin, stands on Simcoe Street next to the Oshawa General Hospital. Sightseers can tour this formidable mansion and view the magnificent landscape and expansive grounds.
R.S. McLaughlin had this to say about life: “The things I cherish are harder-wearing than gold, the worth of a lifetime spent working at a job that drew the best from me and the men I worked beside. Above all these, I treasure the love of my wife and the affection of my family. Those are the things of real worth in my life.”
Ottawa
Who could have imagined that this raw frontier town, situated on the south bank of the Ottawa River, would one day become the capital of a new country.
In the spring of 1826, Colonel By was ordered to oversee the construction of the Rideau Canal. This artificial waterway was designed to link the Ottawa River with Lake Ontario to provide an alternative strategic route between Upper and Lower Canada.
Colonel By quickly established his base of operations at the present site of Hull, Quebec, near the headlocks of this canal. Phileman Wright, an American, arrived at this site in 1800, with his wife and a few other settlers. Wright eventually established a gristmill, a tannery, a blacksmith shop, and a bakery, and the community became known as Wright’s town or Wrightville, until 1875, when it changed to Hull.
It was the governor-in-chief’s wife, Lady Dalhousie, who lifted the first shovel of earth of this 200-kilometre-long (125 mile) canal project. News of this massive canal project attracted hundreds of Irish labourers from the cities of Montreal and Quebec. Although work was plentiful, housing shortages abounded. Hazardous working conditions meant there were numerous injuries and deaths from explosions, falling rocks, and trees.
In 1827 Colonel By turned his attention to establishing a townsite at the canal’s northern terminus, where some of the early settlers had put down roots. This new settlement was named Bytown, in his honour.
Jehiel Collins, a United Empire Loyalist, was actually the first to settle on the present-day site of Ottawa. He arrived in 1809 at a canoe landing on the south bank of the river below the Chaudiere Falls. In 1817 a civil engineer named John Burrows settled on 200 acres that is now the downtown core of Ottawa. The property was bounded in the north by present-day Wellington and Rideau Streets, on the south by Laurier Avenue,