Village Squire, 1976-08, Page 7that new things must blend well with the
atmosphere of the village, that new buildings
should harmonize with old and never, never,
be modern like the kind of thing you'd find in
(heaven forbid) Grand Bend. Businesses here
are careful to convey an image of being on the
ball, but not overly aggressive. It's the kind of
atmosphere that probably frustrates some
people, but it's the kind of thing that makes
the village so dear to so many others. The
ironic thing is that it's not the way things
were supposed to be. Actually, way back a
century and a half ago, Bayfield was
supposed to be the largest town in the county,
not the smallest village. If Carl Lodewyck,
Baron van Tuyll van Serooskerken, Lord of
Ysendoorn had had his way, Bayfield would
today be the metropolis of the county. He
purchased some 3000 acres of land in the
1830's from the Canada Company, ranging
along both sides of the Bayfield river. A
Lieut. Bayfield a surveyor with the British
Admiralty chose the spot for him. He never
even got to see the land before he died in
1835.
His son, Vincent Gildermeester Baron van
Tuyll etc. etc. however did see the site after
he inherited it. He came to Canada while still
a bachelor and lived in Goderich for a time in
the high society of that time with Dr. Tiger
Dunlop and his friends. He returned to
Europe however and married a young woman
of his class who had no intentions of spending
the rest of her life in a backwoods little
settlements in Canada. Unfortunately, it took
hard work as well as vision to build a pioneer
community and the titled family didn't really
seem to have the heart for it. The younger
Baron too soon died but at least the town got
its start before he did. The first small clearing
had been made in 1833 on the south side of
the river and Riley's boarding house was built
to house the workmen who the Baron
employed to turn the wilderness into a town.
John Morgan then built a store and two more
log buildings came before in 1836 the first log
school was built. The building is still
standing, though not really visible since it
was incorporated years ago in the house of
Lucy R. Diehl a local writer and historian.
In 1837 saw the workmen, contracted by
the Baron before his death, making real
progress. William Gray built a damn on the
river and mills were built. Market Square,
now the large Clan Gregor Square in the
centre of the village, was cleared. Streets
were laid out and lots were surveyed. There
were about 75 people in the village that
summer, but most were transients.
But Bayfield wasn't alone in its slow
growth. Nearly all the communities in the
Canada Company tract were growing slowly.
They were hampered most of all by the
unwillingness of the Canada Company to
spend money on things like roads. The
Company loved to sell land, but often it was
virtually impossible to get to that land, let
alone get your produce out to market once you
finally managed to set up a working farm.
It was this kind of lack of concern for the
people of the area that led Colonel Van
Egmond of the Seaforth area to join with
William Lion MacKenzie to try to overthrow
the ruling Family Compact in Toronto and
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bring in reforms. The attempt, of course, was
a failure.
But despite everything, people did come to
the wilderness and did turn it into some of the
most productive farmland in the world and it
was that farmland that for a while seemed
ready to turn Bayfield into the thriving
metropolis the Barons had hoped it would be.
With horrid roads. Lake Huron seemed to be
the best way of getting Brain to markets and
in the 1840's Bayfield became a shipping
centre. A large grain elevator 30 feet by 60 by
25 feet high was built to store grain from the
farmers. The grain was transported from the
elevator to schooners by a scow.
As usual the commercial impetus from
farming led to spinoff businesses and in the
1800's that meant there had to be liquor in
there somewhere. At one time there were as
many as 15 hotels in the village to cater to the
thirst of the farmers who'd made a dusty trip
in from their farms.
But, progress passed Bayfield by in the
form of the railway. First it was the Stratford
to Goderich line in 1858 that began the
growth of Goderich and doomed Bayfield.
Then it was the London, Huron and Bruce line
that again bypassed Bayfield in favour of
Clinton and other points in a straight line
north of London. The railways took away the
shipping business and soon the harbour
didn't hum any more.
When Bayfield was incorporated as a
village in 1876 it had a population of over 700
persons. After the grain shipping began to
die off the main industry was fishing for lake
trout, "salmon" trout, whitefish, pickerel,
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V
VILLAGE SQUIRE/AUGUST 1976 5