Allan Paton Remembers Gannon’s Narrows And Oak Orchard

Allan’s family lived in Peterborough, but they enjoyed spending their summers at a cottage on the north shore of Gannon’s Narrows, near Oak Orchard. By the time he was a boy, the trading post had become a private home and the Gannon family still lived on the waterfront. Four of John Gannon’s descendants lived in Ennismore, near Gannon’s Narrows. Tom Gannon, lived in the family homestead, which was on the south shore of Buckhorn Lake on the Ennismore side. “All three of the Gannon brothers were farmers. I don’t remember there being any women in their households. As far I know they were either bachelors or widowers. Tom Gannon’s farm had roughly a mile of shoreline on the Ennismore, Buckhorn Lake side of the narrows. His sister, Marion (Mrs. George Thompson) had inherited the Pigeon Lake part of the Gannon property and had a cottage on this northern end of the property. Tom’s property is now Gannon Estates.”

There was an active farming community around Gannon’s Narrows, “just about everything that could have been farmed was. The farms in the area were a tough go, they were stony and could be pretty rough. Darius (pronounced “Dry-Us) Irwin, lived across from another of the Gannon Brothers at 1702 Tara Road (the house and garage are still there, and look roughly the same as they did in the 1950s). Darius was also a mechanic and welder.

“My mother had grown up on a farm, and she was satisfied enough with how Ralph Chase (a farmer on Pigeon Lake, in Harvey Township, north of Gannon’s Narrows) did things that she bought raw milk from him. He had all purpose cattle, that were good for both beef and milk. He would drive his cattle down to the water. Ralph treated his cows like pets, they all had names and tended to follow him wherever he wanted them to go, rather than having to be driven or herded. Especially when he was older, he would cover some of the distance with his Ferguson tractor. He was a bachelor and we would see him farming late at night, at 9 or 10 o’clock. You would see the light on at the entrance to the barn, and know that Ralph was out there working. He had two sisters who were older who lived in the house. Ralph didn’t drive much, though he did own a car, so to get to Peterborough he would take the stage—which referred to the same vehicle Hilton Palmer used to deliver the mail. It was like a panel truck, that only had windows on the doors and the windshield.”

“Virtually all the men went fishing, most of the cottagers had a fishing boat, and many of the visitors came to the area to go fishing. Perry Alexander owned Oak Orchard, and it was a luxurious fishing lodge. The building was white, and had a beautiful dining room set up with white table cloths. It was not at all rustic, it catered to the well to do. Fishing guides would come over from Curve Lake to take visitors out in their canoes. I remember one of them was a Whetung and another was a member of the Jacobs family. The guides would not stay at the lodge, they just paddled over daily from Curve Lake to pick up the visitors.” Oak Orchard catered to American millionaires, Bert Weiss recalled that it cost $25 a day to stay there, which was a lot of money in that era, something that many neighbourhood residents could not afford.

“A lot of tourists came to Oak Orchard. When we saw non-Ontario license plates, the overwhelming majority of them were from Ohio. Between the village of Ennismore, often called “Ennismore Cross” and Gannon’s Narrows, there was a simpler fishing lodge, called Camp Cleveland (later the Ennismore Inn)—reflecting all of the visitors from Ohio. It was a lodge with cabins to rent. At Oak Orchard, the tables were served, whereas at Camp Cleveland the tables were constructed with a centre piece board mounted above the table.  The meal was served “family style” they called it, with the food in serving dishes placed on the serving board, and you served yourself. There was excellent service at Oak Orchard, with nice uniforms. When we went to dinner there, I would have to dress neatly—but I didn’t have to wear a tie because it was just a summer place. There was a separate building where the staff lived. There was shuffleboard there. Oak Orchard was just a summer resort—there was nothing happening there in the winter.”

The Oak Orchard Lodge burned in 1947 along with many of its ancient oaks. Perry Alexander rebuilt a one-story inn, which did not prove profitable. In 1959, the Outboard Marine Corporation purchased the site. “They used it to entertain dealers and test their motors. Later it was the site of Three Buoys Houseboats. They had quite a significant boat house there. There were close to 100 houseboats coming and going from that property—and many inexperienced boaters. Sometimes people were operating a boat for the first time, right in front of the neighbouring cottager’s properties, and there were a few accidents.” The site has since become a waterfront community.

There were many other lodges in the area. “We went to Elim Lodge several times for dinner. They did not have a menu there when we visited, it was just a set meal, but it was very nicely served. The chapel there was quite interesting. It was built with round wooden blocks, cut to length like firewood, and piled as in a wood pile with mortar in between. You could almost see Grandview Lodge from our cottage.”

In the first half of the twentieth century there was a floating bridge across Gannon’s Narrows. Prior to that the Chase family had operated a small ferry. The floating bridge would cost less to construct than a fixed bridge, but required a bridge master to open the bridge every time a boat or log drive needed to pass through. Few people who crossed the bridge would forget the experience.

“I went over many times on my bicycle from about 1952 until it was replaced. I took it very cautiously, because it would be easy to fall. I had a nice Raleigh bike, and you had to go at a slow speeds, because the boards were wet and slippery. There were cracks between them, you had to make sure you didn’t get a wheel askew by getting it stuck in a crack. There was not as much traffic back then. I don’t recall ever being on my bike and having to deal with an oncoming car or a car going in the same direction.”

“The bridge wouldn’t sink under a bike, but if you walked across the bridge, you were going to get your feet wet. If you were in a car, there were a couple of places, where there was an extra width, so a car could pull off to allow an oncoming car to pass. The general thought was that was not a good practice to stop on the bridge, because if a car stopped, it started to go down. I never saw one of those bypass areas used.”

“On the Ennismore end of the floating bridge, there was a section that could be swung open to allow boats to pass through. The bridge tender had a cottage that was immediately adjacent to the bridge, down river. It was a simple frame cottage, quite modest. He would only stay there during the summer. There was no rule of the hours that the bridge operated. Everyone knew that he was just in the cottage there, so the boats would sit there and idle, or honk their horn. The bridge tender had to come out and swing the bridge, every time a large boat came along.”

“A friend had a cedar strip boat, with a 3 or 4 horsepower Evinrude motor. Under the rules he had to drag his boat across like a canoe. There were rollers on the part of the bridge that swung open and closed, and you could take a boat across on the rollers. They were placed so they wouldn’t interfere with the car tires. He argued that since his boat had a motor he shouldn’t have to drag it across. The general rule was that if your boat was longer than 14 or 16 feet, or had a 20 horsepower motor, the bridge would be swung open—otherwise you had to drag your boat across on the rollers. It was easy enough to get them across on the rollers.”

While Allan was a boy, the old floating bridge was replaced with the causeway and truss bridge, which continues to connect Harvey and Ennismore Townships. For one season, while the new bridge was being built, “we had to drive around the long way.” To get from Peterborough to Oak Orchard, “we had to drive through Buckhorn and Harvey Township to the bridge. For the people that lived and worked in Harvey Township, it was much more of an inconvenience.”

“The Bowen family operated a very small store just south of Gannon’s Narrows on the first 90 degree bend, where Road 16 changes from being Blackpool Road to Tara Road. By the time I was visiting, Mrs. Bowen was elderly. It was a variety store, selling necessities like soap and a few groceries. We went there for the ice cream, soft drinks and snacks. They also rented cottages, which were located on the inside of the intersection of Blackpool Road and Tara Road. The store building is still there, since expanded and repurposed as a bungalow.”

When Allan was a boy, many boats were made locally. “Our cedar strip canoe and cedar strip boat were both made by Peterborough Canoe. There was another manufacturer at Lakefield—they called their boat the Canadian—and one in Bobcaygeon.”  One of my friends had a plywood boat. They were typically made of birch plywood, he had a 30 hp Evinrude motor—it was the biggest they had at the time. Then when they came out with a 35 hp, he was able to persuade them to let him trade it in. Then when Mercury came out with a 40 hp, he got that. Later on, you started seeing fiberglass and aluminum boats. Some of the first fiberglass boats that came out were from tri hull from Outboard Marine. They rode flat no matter what you did.”

“Every year, it was a big event when the Islamorada passed through.” Dr. Henderson owned Edgewood, W.T.C. Boyd’s former residence in Bobcaygeon (later Case Manor). A doctor from New York City, he spent his winters in Florida, and would travel by boat along the Intercoastal Waterway that extends from Florida to Virginia, then proceeding to New York and the Hudson River, to Lake Ontario. “It was a white boat with two decks, and roof over the second deck.” It resembled the white steamships that had once toured the region, and stood out from the other boats at the time.

Allan’s father had died, leaving his mother in difficult circumstances. She remarried to Dr. [Norman] Buchanan, whose family had owned the cottage that they stayed at since about 1922. Dr. Buchanan had bought the property from Maguires. They were farmers in Harvey Township, who had used this property, identified on navigation charts as Maguire Point, on Buckhorn Lake, for logging. When Dr. Buchanan bought the Maguire property, there was a small square frame building used as a sleeping cabin and a small barn for stabling their horses during winter logging. The sleeping cabin was integrated into the cottage that Dr. Buchanan built.

“Dr. Buchanan had one of the largest boats they ever built at the Peterborough Canoe Company. It was a 24 foot mahogany runabout. It was an inboard, in a classic style with a varnished deck. There were two bench seats in front of the motor and a single bench seat, suitable for 2 people at the very rear of the boat. He had bought the boat new in the 1930s or 1940s. There were not marinas with dockside fuel pumps in those days, so he had a small shed with a farm size and style fuel tank, with a hand crank. He, or more likely his hired man or me once I was old enough, would fuel up the boat.”

“By the time that I got to know him, Dr. Buchanan was an elderly man. The lawn at the cottage was set up with horseshoe pitches and he still enjoyed fishing, duck hunting and deer hunting. We practiced archery, with a straw filled target. They played badminton. A croquet set was installed on the back lawn every summer.  They liked to entertain their friends from Peterborough, spending time on the lawn or taking the boat to Bobcaygeon or Stoney Lake. He liked to go to the regatta on Juniper Island every summer.” There was a dance hall in Bridgenorth called the Pines, which was near the present site of Tim Horton’s.

“The centre part of the Buchanan family cottage was old—it was basically just a sleeping cabin from the Maguire ownership and there was an ice house at the cottage. There was a board wall on the outside of the icehouse and another on the inside and it was filled with sawdust in between as insulation. By the time I was there, they had electricity, as did Oak Orchard, so the ice house wasn’t used. But we had used an ice box when my family lived in Norwood. Our house in Peterborough was built with only a milk chute. The milk bottles could be delivered by the regular milk deliveryman without disturbing the householder. Our house in Windsor was built with both a milk chute and an ice chute. The ice delivery man could deliver the new block of ice by sliding it through the ice chute directly into the back of the ice box, thus not disturbing the householder.”

The Collings Family had a cottage next door to Dr. Buchanan, and it was another longstanding seasonal dwelling. The land was originally owned by William Crooks and Abraham Nelles. The Collings family acquired the property and George Collings Jr. commissioned the cottage for his duck hunting friends to use in the fall when they visited. His mother, affectionally called Meemow (a southern appellation for grandma), owed the building. George’s daughter had the old log cabin shipped down to Virginia, where it was reassembled on a mountain. The old log woodshed still stands on the property.

Allan liked to take his canoe up Sandy Creek to Sandy Lake. “If you were industrious about it, it would take about 2 or 2 ½ hours from Gannon’s Narrows. You would hit places where there was a beaver dam, or shallows, and have to drag your canoe a bit. Sandy Beach was a popular swimming spot. Heading out into the water, it was very gradual. You had to go a fair distance before the water was deep enough to swim in. Some parents would get upset about their children being so far out, but because it was so shallow they could just stand up.”

Looking back on how Gannon’s Narrows has changed, one thing that stands out to Allan is the bridge itself. As today’s youth jump off the bridge’s trestle, it would be hard for many of them to imagine the days when it was a slippery floating bridge across the lake. The floating bridge was memorable, but so is the causeway and trestle that replaced it. Today, as motorists speed across the narrows, it’s a very different place than when boats would stop and wait for the floating bridge to swing open on the way to Oak Orchard. Many of the lodges have disappeared, as many families have come to enjoy life on the lakes year round.

This story was inspired by an interview of Maria Gannon by Bob Hatton of the Peterborough Examiner (1949). To read the original story see: https://maryboro.ca/story/maria-gannon-reflects-on-the-gannons-narrows-floating-bridge-and-its-old-fur-trade-post/

This story is part of our partnership with Maryboro Lodge, The Fenelon Falls Museum and was written by Glenn Walker.

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