KAWARTHA LAKES-Since time immemorial, Port Perry has been a very important point in the transportation networks to and from the Kawarthas. Today, when most people drive to get from Point A to Point B, it is at the intersection of Highway 7A and Simcoe Street (2). Before the advent of automobiles in the early twentieth century, travellers and freight often used the combination of steamships and railways—and this was a point of transhipment for a large proportion of the traffic coming from the tributary waterway. Up to the mid-nineteenth century, many travellers portaged from Lake Ontario to Lake Scugog. The ancestors of the Mississaugas of Lake Scugog moved to the region around 1700 from their previous homes around Lake Huron. Before they migrated south, central Ontario was home to the Wendat (Huron).
Reuben Crandell and family became the first European settlers in Reach Township in 1821. The family was both notorious and influential. The Crandells were members of the Markham Gang, a group of thieves who agreed to be mutual alibis. After their crimes escalated to grisly murders, four gang members were executed, though the Crandells escaped with lighter punishment. Reuben, along with his sons Stephen Elmore and Benjamin were acquitted of murder, because of a lack of evidence, though Stephen was in possession of the deceased’s clothing. Daughters Lucy Ann and Eleanor narrowly escaped larceny charges. George received a five-year sentence in the Kingston Penitentiary after he was caught red handed stealing his neighbour’s gun, which he served alongside his brother Benjamin, who was convicted of similar charges.Â
After George was released in 1850, he got a job working on a steamship, the Woodman, which was appropriately named, because much of the freight from the district came from forest industries. George seized the opportunity to buy this ship after it caught fire. It would not take him long to create a steamship company that offered an integrated transportation network spanning the upper Kawartha Lakes (as it was later named by a rival transportation company). Much of the freight travelled to Port Perry, where it was hauled via road to Lake Ontario. The traffic supported the community’s development. A trip to the upper lakes would take days, making accommodations along the way a necessity.
In early years, there was rivalry between competing centres over which port would handle the commerce flowing through Lake Scugog. The completion of the Whitby to Port Perry Railway in 1872 helped cement this community as the primary port at the south end of Lake Scugog. But the railway would also divert traffic around the lake. For people and goods moving from settlements that had a railway connection, it was faster and saved transhipment to just use the railway, rather than steamers to Port Perry, then via railway to Whitby.Â
Automobiles made transportation faster and less reliant on the routes and timetables of transportation companies. After the Second World War, most families had an automobile and time for recreation like cottaging on Lake Scugog. Since H.R. Oakman’s aerial photograph was taken circa 1960, Port Perry has noticeably grown, as have many of the cottage communities on the adjacent waterfront. A short drive from the urban centres on the north shore of Lake Ontario, Port Perry has grown rapidly in the twenty-first century.Â
This story is part of our partnership with Maryboro Lodge, The Fenelon Falls Museum and was written by Glenn Walker.
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