By Bruce Davidson
The relative youth of Canada is nowhere better illustrated than by delving into the early days of Parry Sound. In 1867 the Town was scarcely even a settlement. Maybe not so astonishing when one realises that the newly born Canada consisted of only four provinces in the east and nothing beyond Ontario to the west. It wasn’t until 1869 that Canada purchased the vast tract of land extending all the way to the Pacific Ocean held by the Hudson’s Bay Company, known as Rupert’s Land for the sum of L 300,000 plus land considerations. Imagine: many Canadians have been around for more than half the time Canada has been a Nation!
In this context, we can better appreciate the fact that with no roads into the swampy, rocky Canadian shield of central Upper Canada, what was to become Parry Sound was largely inaccessible to all but the voyageurs and trappers of the time. The turning point of development, as certainly must have been intended was the completion in 1855 of the Canadian Northern Railroad linking Toronto and Collingwood. With Collingwood now the focus of western development for Upper Canada, shipping provided access to the eastern shores of Georgian Bay, albeit in the face of some of the greatest number of uncharted rocks and shoals on the planet. (The huge number of ships lost in those early years begat the construction of lighthouses up and down the Georgian Bay in the late 1800’s)
Significantly the year following the completion of the railroad a young surveyor named William Gibson arrived in Parry Sound and, recognising the potential of the unlimited pine forests stretching to the horizon, applied for a timber limit and erected a sawmill at the mouth of the Seguin River.
In 1863 businessman William Beatty and his two sons William and James, sailed up to the mouth of the French River in search of timber limits. As one story goes, a storm drove them to seek shelter in Parry Sound whereupon they heard that the Gibson timber limits were for sale. The result was that James and William Beatty bought the ‘Parry Sound Estate’ from the Gibsons. The estate consisted of a small mill taking its power from the lower falls of the Seguin River, a few cabins and a fifty-square-mile timber limit. (The Beattys also bought the land where the Town of Parry Sound now stands and on May 14, 1867 bought 2,200 acres at the mouth of the Seguin River for $439.) Perhaps it’s surprising that the Beattys didn’t change the town name to Beattytown when Confederation occurred just six weeks later.
The Beatty partnership was organized through the J. and W. Beatty Company in 1865. The Beatty prominence became so large in Parry Sound that William became known as the “Governor”. In the deed of every building he subsequently sold he inserted a clause prohibiting the sale of liquor. (The “Beatty Covenant” remained in effect until 1948.) Beatty had the site of the Town of Parry Sound surveyed in 1869 and built a store, gristmill, a church, a shingle mill and roads linking his settlement to others in the region. The ‘Governor’, firmly in control set about creating a Methodist Utopia in subsequent years relegating Catholics and drinkers to the south shore of the Seguin River.
Of particular interest to West Carling members, Beatty was so keen to improve access to his town from Georgian Bay that he agreed to pay half the cost of constructing a lighthouse in the Mink Islands if the government would pay the rest. Not surprisingly, J and W Beatty was subsequently contracted to build the original lighthouse on Mink Island, which was placed in operation on November 3, 1870. Almost immediately this structure was deemed inadequate and too far away from the main shipping channel. It was replaced by an octagonal structure on nearby Red Rock Island in 1881. Alas, the engineers of the time failed to adequately consider that during powerful storms the raging seas could break right over the entire structure. So in 1884 the wooden cribs of the base were replaced by a steel cylinder 12‘ tall and 45’ in diameter. The riveted steel plates of the new base were then filled with stone masonry and cement. Finally, in 1912 a 57’ tall cylindrical tower built of reinforced concrete was erected on this solid base. Ugly maybe, sturdy for sure, Red Rock Lighthouse housed legendary keeper Adam Brown for 40 years and stands today as a Carling legacy.
Download this story and the entire WCA Spring Newsletter May 2018 in PDF format (1.5MB).