Simcoe County Historical Association

Port McNicoll is fighting to keep a local historical treasure on their shores. Audra Brown has more on the community’s efforts to stop a Titanic-era ship from moving to a Kingston museum.

We hoped that Friends of Keewatin would be granted the federal heritage designation to allow them to take possession of the ship from Skyline Investments.

In Canada, McCulloch worked on the development of the Avro Arrow jet. His love for cars and engines endures.

Innisfil's bicentennial book features collection of stories on town's people and places, a nod to its achievements and growth over the years.

The Anglican church has a long and storied history dating back almost as far as town itself.

The school opened in March of 1882 and was constructed at a cost of $12,000.

Between 1934, when the Dionne girls were born, and 1943, close to three million people made the long journey to Callander and nearby Quintland.

Ice Harvesting on Lake Simcoe Harvesting ice from Lake Simcoe was once big business, providing winter employment for hundreds of area farmers. Only 70 years ha...s passed since the last blocks were cut from its frozen surface, and yet today this industry that made Lake Simcoe known across North America is largely forgotten. In the 19th and first half of the 20th century, the primary method of refrigeration - vital for the operation of restaurants, hotels, and butcheries - came from ice painstakingly cut from countless northern lakes. At the time, Lake Simcoe ice was widely considered to be the best in North America; tested for purity several times a year, it always achieved a perfect score. Ice harvesting as an industry began on Lake Simcoe the 1870s. Rapid shipment to distant markets was important in order to reduce melting in transit, so harvesting was limited to locations where railways came alongside the shoreline and afforded easy loading. The principle areas of operation therefore included Barrie, Jackson's Point, Belle Ewart, and Gilford. Since harvesting couldn't begin until the lake surface had frozen solid, the industry depended largely upon the whims of nature. Harvesting began in earnest once the ice had reached 10 to 20 inches in thickness which, in a typical year, occurred in January or February. It was then a mad dash to bring in the yearly quota before the ice began to melt in March. The process of harvesting ice began by horses pulling scrapers across the lake’s frozen surface in order to smooth it to acceptable levels. Then, the outlines of blocks were marked out with charcoal briquettes. Originally these blocks were cut by manually using hand saws, but by the turn of the century the process became mechanized, with saws driven by steam and, later still, automobile engines. Blocks typically measured 22 by 32 inches and weighed between 50 to 300 pounds. They were brought to shore via channels cut into the ice, then deposited in warehouses or directly into waiting railcars by way of a conveyor belt. Sawdust, up to a foot thick, insulated the ice to prevent melting. Ice from Lake Simcoe was delivered as far away as cities along the eastern seaboard of the United States, some even reaching the Carolinas and Florida, though in the latter cases as much as 40% of the mass would be lost on route. Because the majority of ice cut on Lake Simcoe was destined for US markets, the industry was dominated by a conglomeration of five American companies called the Ice Union, the largest of its kind in the world. The Ice Union was content to focus on international sales, largely leaving the smaller Canadian firms to fulfill local needs (I’ll touch on these domestic companies in a later post). Starting around 1920, artificial ice began to slowly supplant natural ice for most uses because there are inherent drawbacks in harvesting rather than manufacturing ice: Wastage was inevitable during the lengthy shipment by rail; it was time consuming to make blocks fit with the iceboxes of the day; unseasonably warm winters could undermine profits; and sawdust had to be washed away before delivery. Artificial ice was clearly the way forward. The last commercial ice cut on Lake Simcoe was around 1950 This post was excerpted and condensed from a chapter on ice harvesting in my book, Secrets of Lake Simcoe. Images provided by Innisfil Historical Society for my book See more

The Robinson family has owned the barn for almost 30 years. Bill Robinson and his father (who originally owned the barn) brought the barn over from Springwater township where it was excavated and rebuilt log-by-log in Cookstown in 1992.

A ding on an Ancestry.ca account has led to a family being reunited with a major piece of their history, and it’s all thanks to the researching skills of local readers.

By 1905, 40 acres were occupied by buildings, 20 in gardens, 35 cultivated as farm land and the remainder in pasture and bush; Property later became home of HRC.