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34 THE RURAL VOICE
Book Review
A pioneer family enjoys the view at Kincardine harbour and lighthouse.
Lakeshore
history
remembered
It's strange that with so much
water around the edges of Bruce and
Huron Counties the culture of most
of the region has not been more
influenced by the lake. While a whole
province like Nova Scotia can be
steeped in the lore of the area that
depended on the water for a living, in
our region most people seemed to
turn their back on the water and
concentrate on farming and, in the
early years, logging.
Sandra Orr, whose stories often
appear in The Rural Voice, has tried
to remedy our ignorance of the role
Lake Huron has played in the history
of the region by compiling Huron —
Grand Bend to Southampton,
published by Boston Mills Press.
The choice of the section of the
Lake Huron shoreline covered in the
book seems arbitrary but, that aside,
the book is a wonderful introduction,
or reintroduction, to the history of the
Lakeshore. It's like looking through
an old scrapbook with someone
explaining to you what you're seeing.
The book is filled with wonderful old
photographs, sketches and maps that
help capture some of the flavour on
the water and in the communities
where it played a huge part in life.
Few inland residents of the two
counties, for instance, probably knew
that there was a ship building
tradition in Kincardine and Goderich
in the days when wood and sail ruled
the waves. Little harbours all along
the Lakeshore were used for loading
grain from the farms of the area,
often with very crude facilities.
Life was as dangerous on Lake
Huron as it was on the Atlantic or
Pacific. In the early years, before
lighthouses were built and harbours
improved, there were many ship
wrecks as boats tried to get into the
harbours with the prevailing winds
behind them. One of the urgent
matters for towns like Southampton
or Goderich that fancied themselves
growing as important ports, was
getting more money for harbour
improvements. Lighthouses were also
built to help navigation. Still, even
after many improvements, storms
took their toll. The great storm of
1913 sank 40 ships on the Great
Lakes, with a loss of 235 lives.
Fishing was once a major industry
in communities along the lake. In
Southampton in 1884 there were 18
fishing boats with 70 people working
in the fishing industry. In 1894 as
many at 70,700 men fished on 1,178
large boats and 34,100 small boats on
the Canadian side of Lake Huron. As
we're seeing in the Maritimes today,
over -fishing couldn't last. By the
1940s only a handful of workers were
in the industry.
Today we think of the lakeshore
primarily as a tourist attraction, a
trend that started in the 1870s when
resort hotels were constructed along