The Rural Voice, 1996-11, Page 40Book Review
Vanished villages tells story of Ontario
REVIEWED BY KEITH
ROULSTON
Ron Brown is on safer ground
with his new book Vanished Villages
than with his earlier Ghost Towns of
Ontario series of books.
Some reader might remember
when residents of Wroxeter were
perturbed enough at their village
appearing in one of Brown's books
that they decided to fight back and
prove their town wasn't dead (there's
a restaurant called Casper's and the
village holds a Ghost Town
Hoedown). This time Brown deals
with towns which, for the most part,
are well past the ghost town
description. Most have vanished with
scarcely a trace. It's hard, for
instance, to find Rodgerville, south
of Hensall in Huron County or
Kennicott in Perth County on
Highway 23 north of Mitchell or
Scooptown, west of Paisley in Bruce
County.
While previous books
documented communities it was still
possible to see, it will take some real
detective work for travellers to find
some of the former communities
Brown describes here. Still, the
stories of the vanished villages give a
quick trip back in time to understand
how Ontario came to be, and why so
many communities disappeared as
the province's economy evolved.
Brown divides the stories into the
different reasons they existed in the
first place. He starts, for instance,
with communities that owed their
existence to the fur trade, then moves
to the lake ports that once provided
access to the newly -settled hinterland
of Ontario. Later come the crossroad
hamlets and the villages created
because streams provided power for
mills. Reading each of the sections
on villages scattered across the
province gives a snippet of the way
rural Ontario developed. He tells the
story of Strathaven, for instance,
which grew on the banks of the
Bighead River in Grey County after
J. Thomas and sons built their flour,
saw and shingle mills in the 1860s.
Those key industries in a pioneer
community then attracted other
36 THE RURAL VOICE
trades, like a blacksmith and a wagon
maker. The growing community then
saw two general stores locate, then a
church, a school and a Foresters Hall.
But the community was bypassed by
the railway and eventually all its
businesses disappeared. Today, he
reports, only the church and its
manse remain while one of the
stores and the school have become
private homes.
Similarly the vanished villages of
Sunshine, Bodmin and Newbridge in
Huron County all sprouted because
of the power of the Maitland River,
but faded when the railways went to
nearby villages like Brussels and
Blyth.
Henfryn, east of Brussels,
however, was created by the railway.
Its position on the Wellington, Grey
and Bruce Railway helped attract
sawmills, a brickyard, a church,
general store and a town plan for 98
village lots. Most remained empty.
In Perth, Brunner also was a
railway access point for the farm
products from the fertile farms of the
county. This created a need for a
stockyard for cattle going out and a
coal yard for coal coming in. The
settlement also attracted a cheese
factory, a creamery and a
lumberyard.
In Bruce, the station at Drew was
created as a shipping point for the
yellow brick from the nearby
brickworks. By the 1930s the
brickworks had closed and by the
1950s the station closed too, later
burning down.
The book contains stories of over
200 places in Ontario and has 100
maps to help locate these former
communities and photos of what's
left of the settlements.
In dealing with so many villages it
means there can't be a lot of detail on
any one of the storis. Still, Vanished
Villages provide a quick and
enjoyable tour of an Ontario no longr
exists, and a chance to understand
what brought us to the Ontario of
today.0
Vanished Villages: by Ron Brown,
Polar Bear Press, Toronto. Quality
paperback, 208 pages. $17.95.
News
Stewart outlines key
issues for rural
Canada
If rural Canada is to realize its
potential it must be connected and
have the tools, Jane Stewart, federal
minister of revenue told the annual
meeting of the Perth County
Federation of Agriculture in Mitchell,
October 17.
Stewart said there are five key
issues for rural Canada. One, she
said, is to be connected through
infrastructure such as the Internet.
This requires better telephone lines in
many areas. Through its Community
Access Program, the federal
government has been working to
ensure rural communities are
connected to the Internet, she said.
Rural Canada must also be
connected to the federal government
if it is to meet the goal of $20 billion
in agricultural exports in the year
2000 (up from $13 billion in 1993).
The federal government has to build
its programs around the needs of
farmers, she said.
To meet the challenge of growth
farms and rural businesses must have
access to capital, she said. The size
and scale of farming is changing,
requiring greater capital and farmers
are looking at things like value-added
products. Banker, the Farm Credit
Corporation, and credit unions have
to understand the new requirements.
Thanks partly to pressure from rank
and file MPs, she said, banks are
responding and understanding they
must have a strategy for rural
Canada.
There must be ways to make sure
the family farm can be transferred
from one generation to the next, she
said. The retention of the $500,000
tax-free capital gains exemption for
farmers "was critical to us as rural
MPs".
The fourth key issue is
partnerships, Stewart said pointing to
the ethanol plant at Chatham in
which farmers, the federal and
provincial government and private
industry all shared a part.
"The bureaucracy said we didn't
need it," she says, but rural MPs
insisted it was necessary. "It took a