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French Presence in Cornwall, The
A vital cultural force in eastern Ontario, the Franco-Ontarian community in Cornwall was established during the late 1870s when large-scale industrial expansion led to an influx of workers and tradesmen from Quebec. By 1881 French-speaking residents comprised the largest single cultural group in the town. Supported by a number of religious and scholastic institutions, including l'Église de la Nativité de la Bienheureuse Vierge Marie, the Francophone community grew steadily in the decades that followed. Increasingly... -
James Bertram Collip 1892-1965
A co-discoverer of insulin, J.B. (Bert) Collip was one of Canada's most prolific medical researchers in the first half of the 20th century. Born and raised in Belleville, Collip received a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Toronto in 1916. There, on leave from the University of Alberta in 1921, Professor J.J.R. Macleod invited him to work with Frederick Banting and Charles Best on a substance they hoped could treat diabetes. In 1922, Collip... -
Nuclear Power Demonstration Reactor
On June 4, 1962 the Nuclear Power Demonstration (NPD) Reactor 3 km east of Rolphton supplied the Ontario power grid with the first nuclear-generated electricity in Canada. A joint project of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, Ontario Hydro and Canadian General Electric, NPD was the prototype and proving ground for research and development that led to commercial application of the CANDU system for generating electric power from a nuclear plant using natural uranium fuel, heavy... -
Admiral Sir Charles Edmund Kingsmill 1855-1935
Admiral Sir Charles Edmund Kingsmill was the founder of the Canadian Navy. Born in Guelph, Ontario, he attended Upper Canada College and in 1869, entered the Royal Navy in Britain. In 1908, he returned to Canada to advise Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier on the creation of a Canadian navy. He served as the first director of the naval service from 1910-1920 and saw the new navy safely through a period of limited resources and... -
Alexander Morris 1826-1889
An astute public servant who played a significant role in the development of Western Canada, Morris was born in Perth. In 1861, after establishing a successful law practice in Montreal, he was elected to the legislature as the member for Lanark South. An eloquent advocate of the union of British North America, he supported the coalition that made confederation possible. Leaving federal politics in 1872, Morris became interim administrator, then Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba (1872-1877) and... -
Bishop Alexander Macdonell 1762-1840
Patriot, colonizer and priest, he was born in the Highlands of Scotland. In 1804 he came to Canada as chaplain of the disbanded Glengarry Fencibles and later became Auxiliary Bishop of Quebec. As the first Bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of Kingston, formed in 1826, he lived in this building and in 1831 was appointed to the Legislative Council of Upper Canada. In 1837 he founded Regiopolis College in Kingston and is buried in St. Mary's Cathedral in this city. -
Canada's First Polish Settlement
The first group of Polish immigrants to Canada, some 300 in number, established a settlement in this area in 1864. Adverse social conditions and political unrest in their partitioned homeland had encouraged them to leave. They cleared the land and rapidly established a thriving agricultural community. During the 1880s, the village founded here was called Wilno after the birthplace of the Reverend Ludwik Dembski, one of their spiritual leaders. In 1875, the Parish of Wilno... -
Captain A. Roy Brown, D.S.C. 1893-1944
Victor in aerial combat over Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the First World War's leading fighter pilot and German national hero, Arthur Roy Brown was born at Carleton Place. In 1915 he qualified as a civilian pilot and was commissioned in the Royal Naval Air Service. In the thick of vicious air fighting in 1917-18, Brown is credited with at least 12 enemy planes, earning the Distinguished Service Cross and Bar. Though the Canadian's downing of... -
Captain Miles Macdonell
Born in Scotland about 1769, Mile emigrated with his father 'Spanish' John, and other members of the family to New York in 1773. Following the Revolution, they settled near Cornwall at St. Andrew's West. In 1811-12 he became Lord Selkirk's agent, and let the first Band of settlers to the Red River colony. The Nor' Westers endeavored to destroy the Settlement, and arrested Macdonell on a false charge in 1815. Released without trial, he returned to his farm in Osnabruck township, but later moved to his brother's residence at Point Fortune, where he died in 1828. -
Captain Samuel Anderson 1736-1836
This property formed part of the extensive lands granted to Capt. Samuel Anderson, U.E.L., one of the first persons to settle on the site of Cornwall. Born in New England of Irish parents, he served with the British forces during the Seven Years War. At the outbreak of the American Revolution Anderson was imprisoned by the rebels after he had refused a commission in the Continental Army. He escaped in 1776 and was appointed a captain in the 1st Battalion K.R.R.N.Y. He became a justice of the peace for this area in 1785 and later served as the first judge of the Eastern District. -
Chaffey's Mills
Prominent early millers in Eastern Ontario, Benjamin and Samuel Chaffey were born in Somerset, England and came to Upper Canada in 1816. After settling briefly in Perth they moved to Elizabethtown (Brockville) where they operated mercantile and milling ventures. Encouraged by local residents to establish mills along the Rideau River, they chose this location in 1820. Samuel settled here soon after, effecting many improvements to the site. By 1827 an extensive complex including a distillery... -
Champlain's War Party 1615
In September, 1615, a small party of Frenchmen commanded by Samuel de Champlain, and some five hundred Huron Indians, passed down the Trent River on their way to attack the Iroquois who lived in what is now northern New York State. Joined by a band of Algonkians, they skirted the eastern end of Lake Ontario and journeyed southward to a palisaded Onondaga village near the present site of Syracuse, N.Y. Champlain was wounded, the attack... -
Daniel McLachlin 1810-1872
One of the Ottawa Valley's most enterprising lumbermen, McLachlin was born in Rigaud Township, Lower Canada, and by 1837 had built a sawmill and grist-mill at Bytown (Ottawa). In 1851, influenced by the timber potential of the Madawaska watershed, he purchased some 400 acres at the deserted hamlet of Arnprior and in 1854 laid out a town plot. The large sawmills which he built here, greatly stimulated the community's growth. In the legislature of the... -
District Court House and Gaol 1825
In 1816, the Ottawa District was established and the Courts of Quarter Session, which at that time possessed local administrative as well as judicial authority, were held in the Township of Longueuil. In 1824, Jacob Marston donated a plot of land in this vicinity for the use of a court. By September 1825, the central portion of the present building, constructed by Donald McDonald and Walter Beckworth, contractors, was completed. Designed in the Loyalist Neo-Classic style, this is the oldest remaining court house in the province. Extensive additions were made in 1861-62. -
District Court House and Gaol 1833
The central portion of this building was completed in 1833 and served as the court-house and gaol of the Eastern District. First named Luneburgh, this district was established in 1788 by proclamation. In 1794 an Act of the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada authorized the magistrates of the District Court of Quarter Sessions to erect a court-house and gaol at Cornwall. A two-storey frame structure was completed on this site about 1802 and, until destroyed... -
Fairfield House, The
A superb example of an 18th-century dwelling, the Fairfield House was completed, according to tradition, in 1793. It was built by William Fairfield, Sr., a Loyalist who had settled here with his family nine years earlier. In form and mode of construction this large, handsome farmhouse reflects the New England background of the Fairfields. A timber-framed, clapboard structure, it is distinguished by a steeply pitched roof, balanced proportions and fine interior detailing. Later additions ... -
Upper Gap Archaeological Site
First Nations peoples lived in this area thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans. In 1995, archaeological evidence of Iroquoian settlement was discovered nearby. The artifacts found reflected several periods of habitation dating from A.D. 700 to A.D. 1400 and included the remains of decorated ceramic pots, vessels for cooking and storage, and stone tools. Hundreds of years ago, the Iroquois lived in longhouses and practised an agricultural way of life, cultivating primarily corn... -
Jeanne Lajoie, 1899-1930
Jeanne Lajoie, a dedicated teacher and advocate for the establishment of French schools in Ontario, was born in Lefaivre, near Hawkesbury, in 1899. In 1923, Lajoie helped a group of francophone parents to establish the first independent French school in Pembroke. The school ensured that their children were educated in their own language. The creation of L'École Sainte-Jeanne d'Arc was one of the last major events in the Franco-Ontarian struggle against Regulation 17, which from... -
Timber Rafting on the Ottawa
The rafting of square timber down the Ottawa River, begun in 1806, reached its peak during 1861-91 and ended in 1909. Pine "sticks" from .1 to .2 square metres and 12 to 15 metres long were floated down tributary rivers such as the Petawawa, Madawaska, Bonnechere and Mississippi to rafting points on the Ottawa. There "cribs" were made up, containing 20 to 40 pieces of timber, and as many as 200 cribs, were in turn... -
"Cariboo" Cameron 1820-1888
Born in this township, John Angus "Cariboo" Cameron married Margaret Sophia Groves in 1860. Accompanied by his wife and daughter, he went to British Columbia in 1862 to prospect in the Cariboo gold fields. That year at Williams Creek he struck a rich gold deposit. While there his wife died of typhoid fever and, in order to fulfil her dying wish to be buried at home, he transported her body in an alcohol-filled coffin some... -
"Pirate" Johnston 1782-1870
At nearby Wellesley Island on the night of May 29-30, 1838, a band of Upper Canadian rebels and their American supporters burned the Canadian steamer "Sir Robert Peel." The attackers, about thirteen in number, were led by William "Bill" Johnston, a former Canadian who had fled to the U.S. during the War of 1812. He became a trader and smuggler and, in 1838, was appointed Commodore of the "Patriot" army. He participated in several attacks upon Canada during the Rebellion and subsequently settled in Clayton, New York, where he became keeper of a lighthouse. -
Abel Stevens
Born at Quaker Hill, New York, about 1750, Stevens served as a British agent during the Revolutionary War despite being enrolled in the rebel militia. After the war, he lived in Vermont where, as an ardent Baptist, he became a deacon in 1786. Attracted by Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe's offer of land in Upper Canada, he moved to the province and settled in this area in 1796. A vigorous colonizer, Stevens within two years of his arrival... -
Addington Road, The
This colonization road extended for about 73 miles northward from the Clare River in Sheffield Township to the Peterson Road in Burdenell Township. It formed a network of government roads built to open up the southern region of the pre-Cambrian Shield. From 1854 to 1857, Aylsworth B. Perry, a local surveyor, supervised construction of the road from the Clare River to the Madawaska River. A twelve-mile extension northward to the Peterson Road was added during... -
Albert Carman 1833-1917
A commanding figure in Canadian Methodism during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Carman was born in Iroquois and educated at Victoria College, Cobourg. He worked briefly as a teacher and was then appointed principal of Belleville Seminary, later Albert College, in 1858. A masterful administrator and, after entering the Methodist Episcopal ministry, a militant advocate for Methodist education, Carman spearheaded the successful development of this Methodist school during his 17-year term there. Following... -
Albert College
In 1854, the Methodist Episcopal Church, recognizing the need to improve the training of its clergy, began the construction of a seminary on this site. Designed to accommodate 150 residents with classroom facilities for 400 students, Belleville Seminary was opened in July 1857. Under the able direction of its principal, Albert Carman, the school flourished, producing several eminent graduates. In 1866, it was rechartered as Albert College, an affiliate of the University of Toronto, and...