Hidden Ontario (10 page)

By 1857 the village was growing. Each family had a parcel of land, from one to four acres, and the community numbered 96 individuals. Public property consisted of a log church, a few farm implements, and some stock. The settlement was composed of 17 houses and six barns.

In 1865 Reverend Gilmour recorded a conversation he had had with John Irons, a band member there. Irons protested that although the Mud Lake people had land, it was not really their own, as in actuality it belonged to the New England Company. The Natives were discouraged because they could never call it their own. In 1889 Daniel Whetung wrote, “Our agent calls this place New England Company's Estate not Indian Reserve. He tells us that the company could sell the place.” In this case both Irons and Whetung were of the first generation of men educated in the ways of the non-native. They felt the New England Company was harmful to the community as a whole because it held the deed to the land. The people of Mud Lake had merely the status of tenant or lessee. If they did not abide by company bylaws they could be evicted.

The Department of Indian Affairs proposed that the company convey the lands to the Crown in trust, and on June 4, 1898, the land granted to the New England Company in 1837 was transferred to the Dominion Government in trust for the First Nations people. In 1913 the Mud Lake reserve was purchased by the government from the company and the monies came from the Mud Lake annuity. It was ironic that the Natives had to buy back their land in order to have a home, when they once owned and occupied thousands of acres.

Curve Lake Reserve still reveals the signs of the New England Company planning. In 1893 the land was surveyed and sub-divided into lots, with location tickets given to the occupant of each lot. Many of the two-storey frame houses built by the company still remain on these lots. Location tickets for a 50-acre farm lot were given to occupants who had cleared 20 acres for agriculture. Only six of these were ever handed out.

During the depression years, the Curve Lake band council supported relief measures such as lending $5 from the band capital to each individual requesting it. Certain measures were necessary in the 1930s, as cash was scarce when the basket market disappeared, tourism declined, and the price of pelts hit rock bottom. Eventually, the Department of Indian Affairs refused to permit loans from Mud Lake funds. As an alternative the government began a two-month work program to construct a road into the village and paid each worker 20 cents an hour. Although the Natives were poor, no one starved.

In 1966 Clifford and Eleanor Whetung opened a new outlet, called Whetung's Ojibwa Crafts, for crafts in Curve Lake. This heralded a prosperous business in that field and for the area. From the outlet's humble beginnings, the Whetungs have built a business in aboriginal arts and crafts that is now famous across the country. Traditional and contemporary artistic expressions of Canada's First Peoples have been gathered from reserves across the country and housed in an attractive building guarded by huge totem poles at the front entrance. Ritual masks from the Pacific Northwest, pottery of the Mohawks, and baskets of the Mi'kmaq from eastern Canada are among the items for sale. Handsomely, traditionally dressed fur and leather dolls, handcrafted moccasins, clothing, jewellery, and keepsakes are abundant in the building. Paintings and sculptures from a people who have always been known for their unique and beautiful art are found in a gallery equal to any city gallery in its layout, security, and atmospheric controls. Warmed in winter by a huge stone fireplace that reaches five metres (15 feet) to the ceiling, their art gallery houses the work of many well-known Native artists, and it is well-attended year round.

The traditions are also alive and well there. The local band have their Medicine People and use their purification lodges regularly. They are also open to sharing some of their culture with non-natives, which is a gesture truly to be treasured, given their past experiences with non-natives.

Curve Lake is certainly one Indian Reservation that has recovered some of the Native pride that is inherent in Natives — true to nature and a close relationship to this earth. We need to be grateful for the survival of this heritage in a time when our earth is threatened by our unwillingness to accept and celebrate the differences we see in others.

 

The Natives regarded Rice Lake as a very sacred place. It was here they brought their aged chiefs and wounded warriors for purification; it was here the Mississaugas initiated the tradition of burning off the vegetation on the Rice Lake Plains on the southern shore. This practice encouraged the growth of the coarse grass so loved by deer and gave their lake its name — Pemedash-da-kota, meaning Lake of the Burning Plains.

When the Wisconsin glacier receded from southern Ontario 12,000 years ago, meltwater lakes, including the Kawarthas, were formed. Although Rice Lake, located north of Port Hope and Cobourg, is commonly included in the chain of Kawartha lakes, geologically it is separate. Its origin is actually pre-glacial.

Vegetation types arranged themselves in belts parallel to the retreating ice front and shifted northward following the ice. First was a belt of low tundra-like vegetation, followed by northern coniferous forests of white spruce on the uplands and black spruce on the bottomlands, with willow shrubs, birch, and poplars in the meadows.

One large mammal that prefers this vegetation type is the woodland caribou. In the 1980s, the heel bone of one of this species was uncovered by Derek McBride while building an addition to his cottage, near Webbs Bay on the south shore of Rice Lake.

Since European settlement began, in the 1840s, farmers on the Rice Lake Plains and residents of Gore's Landing have discovered arrowheads, stone pipes, skinning knives, pottery shards, and burial sites that testify to the presence of early Natives who lived and hunted on the shores of Rice Lake.

Gore's Landing. Local Ojibwa guide Billy Hogan and his family on an outing on Rice Lake.

Archives of Ontario

According to lore, a peculiar crevice in a large granite stone at Sager Point, east of Harwood, was used by the Natives to sharpen their tools. It is known locally as a Native rubbing stone.

In 1792 the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, encouraged loyalists who were still in America to emigrate to Upper Canada. As a result Treaty No. 20 was signed in Port Hope in 1818 by the superintendent-general of Indian Affairs, on behalf of His Majesty, King George III, and by the chiefs of the Mississauga Nations. This treaty opened up 1,951,000 acres in the northern sections of the Newcastle District. For this surrender of land, the Nations of the Kawarthas were guaranteed an annual payment of 740 pounds.

In 1973, a trading post was established at the mouth of the Otanabee River on the north shore of Rice Lake. By the last quarter of the 18th century, almost all the important furs were “trapped-out” (depleted by over-trapping) along the north shore of Lake Ontario. In the early 1800s wild rice became an important trade item for the Rice Lake Natives. In 1817 it was reported that the rice of this lake grew so thickly that up to 10,000 bushels a year were available for harvesting. Sadly, the wild rice beds have disappeared due to a number of factors, including the change in lake levels following the construction of dams for the Trent Canal. The creation of the Trent system raised water levels on many lakes. In July 1928, a hurricane wreaked further havoc and, since 1950, the introduction of bottom-feeding carp has destroyed most of the roots of the remaining rice plants.

In the 1840s, a settlement started on the south shore of the lake. The settlers called their home Gore's Landing, named after Thomas S. Gore, a British Navy captain who had owned land here in 1845. This was not the first visit here by white people. In 1825 Peter Robinson brought 1,875 Irish settlers from Cobourg to Gore's Landing, across Rice Lake, and up the Otanabee River to settle in Peterborough.

Gore's Landing began to prosper when it became the terminal point of the plank road from Cobourg to Rice Lake in 1847. A stagecoach connection offered residents and visitors the opportunity to travel. A private boarding school, F.W. Barron Boys' School, was opened by a former headmaster of Upper Canada College. A hotel, a tavern, a general store, and several small industries made up the business section. In the early 1900s, Gore's Landing became a boatbuilding centre and a port of call for Rice Lake steamers. More than one regatta was held at Gore's Landing.

Gore's Landing also has its fair share of famous people who resided here at one time or another, such as the famous nature poet Archibald Lampman; Derwyn T. Owen, who became Anglican Primate of All Canada; and J.D. Kelly, an historical artist.

Few Canadians are aware of a famous artist who built his summer home on the shore of Rice Lake, in Gore's Landing. On January 20, 1845, one of Canada's most prolific but least-known painters, Gerald Sinclair Hayward, was born. A man of many talents, Hayward dared to pursue life to the fullest. He enlisted for frontier service with the Port Hope Infantry Company in November, 1865. He was awarded a Queen's Medal and discharged in April, 1866, with the rank of ensign. Next, he tried farming and railroading, but neither seemed to satisfy him. He was in his early twenties when he decided to start an entirely new career.

The art of painting miniature portraits and scenes appealed to Hayward, but it was not widely practiced in Canada, so he went to study at the Royal Academy schools in London, England, in 1870. While there, he was commissioned by many members of the English, German, and Russian courts to do miniature portraits on ivory. He painted Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), Princess Alice, the Countess of Minto, the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham, Lord and Lady Caven, the Empress of Prussia, and the Czarina of Russia. Later, in Canada, he painted the prime ministers MacDonald and Laurier.

Hayward gave his first exhibition, of 90 modern miniatures, in the United States at the Avery Galleries in New York in 1889 and continued to exhibit throughout the country. One leading newspaper said, “Mr. Hayward has become world-famous in his exclusive field and has painted more than a thousand distinguished persons in America on coming out from London.” Another paper wrote, “His work is strongly individualistic — the eye full of life, hair freely treated, fidelity in tint of complexion, with perfect harmony in tone of background, combine to make the living portrait possible to obtain.”

Hayward took up residence in New York City, but returned to Canada to build a summer home in Gore's Landing on Rice Lake in 1900. He had never really strayed too far from his birthplace, Port Hope. Hayward built a magnificent villa with screened verandas overlooking the lake. He named his home The Willows. This was his favourite retreat, and he was so enchanted with the panoramic view from his tower window that he later painted the lake and its many islands on the walls of his dining room.

As church warden he assisted in the building of St. George's Anglican Church in the village, and much of its artistic appearance is due to his interest in the construction. When he died in New York on March 31, 1926, his ashes were brought to Gore's Landing by his daughter and buried in the cemetery of the church. The
Toronto Star Weekly
published an article on Hayward on April 3 of that year, stating, “In the passing of Gerald Sinclair Hayward, world-famous miniature painter, Canada loses one of her greatest artists.”

Unfortunately, he has been all but forgotten as a Canadian artist. The murals of Rice Lake on his dining room walls are covered with coats of paint, and his beautiful home, The Willows, is now the Victoria Inn. Gerald Sinclair Hayward's tower room is a special one; I have stayed there myself, with my wife.

The Natives went to Rice Lake for purification and that was our experience, too. It was a wild night of rain and lightning; you could open windows in three of the four directions (and we did). The power of nature there was something to behold; we felt blessed to share that space and were amazingly refreshed by the storm. The lake was always sacred to the Natives, and Hayward's home was sacred to him. When that's the case, the feeling is always there for others to share.

You really should pay Gore's Landing a visit. There are a number of architectural delights there that were built between 1848 and 1895. It is obvious that, in their incredible and unique beauty, these buildings were special to their owners. It's a joy to look at and touch what was another's sacred space.

 

To his neighbours, Samuel Lount was an amiable chap. He was outspoken and campaigned for his beliefs. Samuel left Pennsylvania in 1811 and arrived near Holland Landing, where he worked hard and prospered as a farmer, a blacksmith, and a surveyor. He won a position as a Reformer and member of the legislative assembly for Simcoe County. On December 7, 1837, his life looked pretty grim. In the days leading up to this date, he became involved in William Lyon Mackenzie's uprising against the government, the Family Compact. On that fateful day of action, he was in joint command of the rebel forces who met at Montgomery's Tavern (which was located just north of Yonge and Eglinton). Shortly after the rebels' defeat, he became a fugitive of the law and attempted to flee the country.