"...rocks, wood and water...", prehistory-1880
“…rocks, wood and water with seven months of frost and snow…”
The landscape of Ontario's Machar Township is dominated by a ridge of eroded granite and gneiss that extends the length of the township in a north-south direction. Lakes and streams on the east side of the ridge flow into South River and then north to Lake Nippising. The western side of the ridge slopes toward the Georgian Bay. The streams on the northwest slope of the ridge flow into Commanda Creek, which parallels the South River, and, like the South River, drains to Lake Nippising. On the southwestern slope of the ridge is Eagle Lake, a large lake that drains in a southerly direction to the Magnetawan River.
The whole of Machar Township sits on the western shoulder of a geological formation known as the Algonquin Dome. The Algonquin Dome is a mass of igneous rock that rises some one hundred and fifty meters (450 feet) above the waters of Lake Huron. As the prevailing westerly winds carry moisture-laden air from the Great Lakes up the slopes of the Algonquin Dome, the air rises, cools and drops much of its moisture onto the western slopes of the dome. As a result Machar Township receives 1,110 mm (43 inches) of precipitation annually. Machar Township occupies the highest part of the western shoulder of the Algonquin Dome. The highest point of land on Highway 11 is located just a few kilometers north of the Village of South River. The township contains five lakes and a 2,000-acre marsh and is the headwaters of streams that flow east, north, southwest and west.
In 1893 a large area of the Algonquin Dome to the east of Machar Township was set aside as the Algonquin Provincial Park. The Park occupies the highest part of the Algonquin Dome and contains a maze of 24 drainage systems that give rise to seven rivers and over 1500 lakes, rivers and streams. The Algonquin Dome is the southern-most exposure of a rock mass that extends from the Arctic Ocean to the Great Lakes and underlies the entire eastern half of the North American continent. This formation is called the Canadian Shield and contains the oldest rocks to be found in North America. Its surface is exposed from Alberta to the coast of Labrador. On Highway 11 the Shield rock emerges from the overlying sedimentary limestone of southern Ontario at Severn Bridge, about halfway between Toronto and South River. South of Severn Bridge the soil is deep and fertile and suitable for commercial agriculture but north of Severn Bridge the soil is shallow and sandy and overlies solid granite.
The landforms of most of the Canadian Shield was created by glaciers that disappeared about 11,000 years ago. The glaciers pushed off the soil, polished the bedrock and, as they melted, piled up ridges of sand and stone irregularly here and there. For this reason drainage on the Canadian Shield is disorganized with many lakes and streams and convoluted river systems. Except where the glaciers deposited bands of clay, as in the new Liskard region of northern Ontario, poor drainage, shallow soil and an abundance of lakes and streams is characteristic of the entire Canadian Shield.
Machar Township lies in the transition zone between the coniferous forests of northern Ontario and the broadleaf forests of southern Ontario. For this reason, it contains a wide variety of plants and animals. Trees growing on the higher ground include species found in southern Ontario while trees characteristic of northern Ontario predominate in the low-lying areas. Thirty-four tree species grow in the area including several species each of spruce, maple, oak and pine. White cedar, eastern hemlock, tamarack, beech and birch are common. Forty-five mammal species, 60 fish species and 700 insect species have been counted in the forests and waters of Algonguin Park. The most characteristic animals are black bear, beaver, moose, deer, waterfowl, blue jays, chipmunks and mosquitoes. Before the Township was logged about 100 years ago, the shallow soil of the rocky ridges supported an over-story of maple and beech and an under-story of shade-tolerant saplings such as maple, beech, hemlock and balsam fir. The upper valleys were covered in maple, birch and balsam fir and the sandy hills in the marshes supported stands of white pine. The low land on the margins of the swamps contained hemlock and birch and the swamps themselves spruce, cedar and tamarack. Thousand-year-old stands of hemlock provided food and winter shelter for moose and deer. Peat beds found in the marshes supported grasses, low-lying Labrador tea and blue berries and the eastern edge of the Township along the South River contained tracts of old-growth white pine, the largest conifer in eastern North America.
Erosion and soil formation both take place very slowly on the Canadian Shield because the rock is granite with no overlying sedimentary rock. The glaciers removed the soil from the hilltops and polished the bedrock by the grinding action of large stones that were pushed in front of and under the advancing ice. When the glaciers retreated massive boulders were left randomly scattered on the forest floor where they remain today. The sandy mounds found in the marches and valleys are moraines that were deposited as the last glaciers retreated. As a result of glacial action, the soil layer on the hilltops is thin or non-existent. The climate also retards the formation of soil. The extremely high rainfall of the region coupled with cold temperatures produces a sandy, water-logged till known to soil scientists as “podsol”. The rainfall, the low temperatures and the presence of conifers leach the soil and what little humus forms is acidic. There are pockets of good soil in Machar Township, most notably along the South River, but most of the soil is a sandy till of low fertility.
Most of the precipitation falls on the township in the form of rain (778 mm, 30 inches) and, on average, it rains 125 days of the year. The remainder of the precipitation (331mm, 13 inches) falls as snow. In the Almaguin Highlands snow falls for an average of 72 days a year and snow is usually on the ground from November until April. The air temperature ranges from an average maximum of 24° C (75° F) in July to –6° C (20° F) in January and extreme temperatures recorded at Burks Falls range from 35° C (95° F) in July to –46° C (-50° F) in February. As might be expected, July and August are the hottest months and January and February are the coldest. There is a possibility of frost every month of the year. The possibility of a killing frost in both July and August severely limits agricultural pursuits in the region. Early frosts in the low-lying areas and shallow, infertile soil on the ridges and high areas have kept the region from becoming a productive agricultural area.
Despite the absence of favorable conditions for soil formation, the Township has many meadows that support a wide variety of wildlife. Most of these meadows owe their existence to beaver activity. Rain and snow-melt pools into bogs on the hilltops. From the bogs small streams cascade down the hills and into the swamps or lakes between the granite ridges. As soon as a crop of aspen seedlings reach maturity, a pair of wondering beaver will move into the watershed and begin building a series of dams. On a small stream the beavers will cut and chew every available tree and bush within two or three years. Facing starvation, they then abandon the dams and move on. In the meantime, the beaver ponds drown the existing trees, killing them and creating a wetland that is quickly overgrown with grasses, cattails, tag alders and sapling trees. When the beavers leave the level of the water drops, the ponds slowly fill with decaying vegetation and become meadows. Ducks and beaver give way to deer and muskrat. The aspen reappears. When the aspen stand is of sufficient size to support a pair of beaver, the cycle begins again. Although the shallow sandy soil does not hold much water and the monolithic bedrock captures water only in occasional cracks and fissures, the work of the beavers keeps the snowmelt and the rainfall from rushing headlong down to the rivers. Over hundreds of years, the beaver meadows fill with soil and grow up in pine or hemlock.
When the Township of Machar was surveyed in the summer of 1875, the surveyors found no one living within its boundaries. In former times the Huron, Ojibwa and Algonquin Indians had all used the area for hunting and trapping but by 1875 only a small band of Algonquin Indians continued to frequent the region. Huron Indians had once lived in numerous villages around Lake Simcoe but in the winter of 1648-1649 the Iroquois from what is now New York State burned their villages and forced the Huron to flee. The Ottawa were likewise driven from the region and fled to a new village on Lake Michigan. By 1875 the nearest Ojibwa band lived on Manitoulin Island on the other side of the Georgian Bay. During the colonial period Indians all along the East Coast of North America fought among themselves for control of the fur and hide trades and both the Huron and the Ottawa had been driven from the area in the struggle with the Iroquois over control of the fur trade.
From the earliest days of French settlement in Canada until 1820 the fur trade was the most important business in Canada and the Iroquois fought successfully for their share of it. However by 1820 the exhaustion of the supply of furs and increasing demand for timber in Europe brought about by the steam engine shifted the attention of Canadian businessmen from trade with the native peoples to the export of white pine logs. In those days, the Ottawa River valley contained extensive stands of mature eastern white pine. Although commercial cutting of the pine forests had begun years earlier, before the 1860s few of the logs were milled in Canada. Most of the trees were felled and floated down the river to Ottawa where they were loaded unto ships for transport to England. By the 1840s the upper reaches of the Ottawa Valley were being cut and by the 1880s the logging had reached Machar Township. The trees were cut during the winter and piled on the ice of the South River. In the spring the logs floated down the river to Lake Nipissing. There they were boomed together, towed to Wasi Falls and loaded onto railcars belonging to the J.R.Booth Company. The railcars carried the logs overland for some ten miles and then dumped them into Lake Nosbonsing. From there the logs floated to the Ottawa River. At the City of Ottawa the logs were boomed at the Chaudiere Falls and loaded onto ocean-going vessels for export. As early as 1866 the Frasier Lumber Company built a sawmill at the Big Bend of the South River near Powassan and in the 1880s the J.R.Booth Company began logging in the Machar and Laurier townships. Both companies operated lumbering camps in the area and J.R.Booth installed a sawmill at the Eagle Lake narrows. This mill was known as Shannon’s Mill. Another sawmill, Dunbar’s Mill, was located at the site of what is now the Village of Sundridge.
When the Crown deeded land in Machar Township to settlers, the timber rights were reserved for these timber companies. The settlers were allowed to cut only enough pine trees to make a house and a barn. The remainder of the white pine belonged to the lumber companies. After the stands of white pine had been cut, the large companies moved out of the area and other, smaller operations took their place. Some of the early settlers worked for the lumber companies in the winter and worked their farms in the summer. A pattern of bush work in the winter and farm work in the warmer months was common in Machar Township until recent times.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, land pressures and a depression in southern Ontario prompted many new immigrants to leave Canada and move to the United States in search of land that was affordable and suitable for farms. The more settled areas of Ontario were too expensive for these new arrivals and they were often forced to lease land from already established farmers. The immigrants were usually extremely poor and did not have sufficient capital to purchase an already established farm. Nevertheless, their dream was to own their own land. If necessary, they were willing to create a farm out of the wilderness. To encourage these new, mainly Irish, Scottish and English immigrants to remain in Ontario, the Government of Upper Canada began, in 1853, to offer free grants of land in the vicinity of public roads. The grantees were required to clear 12 acres of forest within four years, build a dwelling measuring at least eighteen by twenty feet and to live on the land for five years before they were eligible receive title to the land. In 1868 the Free Grant and Homestead Act opened up 41 newly created townships containing three million acres of land to settlement. Machar Township was included in this Act. The offer of free land attracted hundreds of new immigrants, established farmers and out-of-work industrial workers.
Between 1854 and 1875 the government built about twenty colonization roads to facilitate the settlement of the newly available lands. These roads connected southern Ontario to the new lands in what is now the Parry Sound District. A total of 1544 km (959 miles) of colonization road was built. The longest of the colonization roads was the Muskoka Road. This road was begun at Severn Bridge in 1859. When completed in 1875 it covered 202 km (126 miles) and terminated in the village of North Bay on Lake Nippising. The existing Highway 11 follows the route of the old Muskoka Road in many places. The Muskoka Road was the only colonization road to reach Machar Township but another colonization road paralleled the Muskoka Road some twenty kilometers (12 miles) to the west. That road, the Rosseau-Nippising Road, extended from the village of Rosseau on the Magnetawan River to the village of Nippising at the mouth of the South River at Lake Nippising. The Nippising Road was begun in 1864 and took eight years to build. By 1873 it was open for winter travel by sleigh and in 1875 it was open to wheeled vehicles. In the early years of settlement, the Nippising Road was the preferred route to Machar Township from southern Ontario and most summer traffic prior to 1880 involved travel to Rosseau or Magnetawan by way of Macumoma. The Nippising Road was 110 km (69 miles) long and today is either abandoned or used only for local traffic. It is locally referred to as the Rye Road.
In 1880 the railroad ended at Gravenhurst and there was boat service on the Muskoka Lakes to Rosseau. From Rosseau settlers either walked or rented a team and a wagon for the two-day trip north on the Nippising Road to the inn at Macumoma (the Bummer’s Roost). From Macumoma settlers headed for Machar Township had to travel by canoe and on foot. By 1884 the railroad had reached Bracebridge and by 1886 it had reached the location of South River. After the coming of the railroad, traffic on the colonization roads declined and commerce gradually moved east to be near the Machar (later South River) Railroad Station.
The Free Grants and Homestead Act of 1868 granted each settler over 18 years of age 100 acres and each head of household 200 acres of Crown land. Accordingly, in 1875, Machar Township was surveyed into 490 lots of 100 acres each. A road concession was laid out every two lots for roads running east and west and every five lots for roads running north and south. The east-west roads are known as Concession Roads and the north-south roads are Side Roads. The lots were marked with wooden stacks at the two corners that fronted onto the Concession Roads. In this way each lot was guaranteed road access. (insert link to file 6.1, “Machar Township Survey”)
The first settlers arrived the year after the township was surveyed. The very first arrivals were men who were born in either Scotland or Ireland and who have been living on leased farms in southern Ontario for the last twenty or thirty years. They came alone, with a close relative or friend or, less often, in the company of their wife. They walked into the bush carrying their supplies on their back. If there were no neighbors in the area, they built a lean-to or a bush tepee near a source of water as a temporary shelter. They explored the area and selected a surveyed lot on which to build a dwelling. After cutting a trail to the site, they began the work of clearing and building the required dwelling. These were always log cabins made of pine. The terms of the tenancy allowed the settlers to cut whatever pine they needed for construction purposes. The logs intended for the walls were squared off using a broad-axe designed for that purpose. When the settlers arrived there were already sawmills on Lake Bernard and Eagle Lake and they carried their logs there to be cut into planks for the floors or roof timbers. The roof covering was pine shakes. After completing the cabin, the men returned to southern Ontario for their wives, children, furniture and livestock.
Among the first settlers were John and Flora Campbell, both originally from near Glasgow, Scotland. They farmed near Aurora for nearly thirty years before moving to Machar Township in 1876 when they were both over 50 years of age. They brought eight children with them. Flora Campbell was the first woman to settle in Machar Township and she did not see another woman for seven months after her arrival. Their farm was on the Muskoka Road at Lot 21, Concession 8 along a section of the old road that is now called Riding Ranch Road.
Others quickly joined the first settlers in what could be described as a rush to locate land in Machar Township. During the next couple of years at least twenty families settled in the township. By 1885 thirty-five families had received land grants and by 1900 64 families and 167 children lived in the township. Another one hundred families with 248 children lived in the village of South River. In 1878 the first school in Machar Township was built in the community of Uplands on Lot 20, Concession 4 on the Muskoka Road. By 1901 the student population had increased enough to fill two schools and two new stone school buildings were built. The original log school at Uplands was abandoned in 1902 after a new one-room school was built on Lot 20, Concession 2 about a mile south of the original. The second school, School Section Number Two (nicknamed Hawthorne’s School), was built a mile and a half north of the first school on Lot 21, Concession 7. All three school buildings fronted on the Muskoka Road.
The township’s first store was also located in the Uplands community on Lot 20, Concession 2 on the Muskoka Road. Peter and Esther Shaughnessy ran a feed store and an adjacent store that contained the Uplands Post Office. Peter Shaughnessy was also the Magistrate, a Justice of the Peace and one of the township’s first reeves. He owned a team and a wagon and a hired man made frequent trips to Rosseau to pick up supplies and to haul freight. In the late 1880s and 1890s another store was operated by Jessie Parks at the crossroads of the Muskoka Road and the Eagle Lake Road (4th Concession Road) on Lot 20, Concession 4, a mile north of Shaughnessy’s store. This crossroads became known as Park’s Corners. The farmer across the 4th Concession Road from the store took boarders into the family home. The community’s first church was constructed between 1884 and 1888 at the Eagle Lake Narrows. (insert link to file 6.2, “Machar Township communities 1900”
To the east and downhill of the Uplands community the 2nd and 4th Concession Roads had been laid out across a large marsh. The first family to settle in that direction arrived in Machar Township in 1879. They built a cabin on the shore of East Bay on Eagle Lake and lived there for the winter while they cleared a road across Tyerman’s Marsh following the 2nd Concession Road allowance. When the trail was passable the family moved to lots 12 and 13, Concession 3, on the eastern side of the marsh about two miles west of the South River and about a mile and a half from Shaughnessy’s store. In those days this farm, known as Cole’s Hill, was in the backwoods. The focus of the community was at Uplands and the colonization roads to the west. The village of South River did not yet exist. Later that year (1880) a fellow named Dunbar cleared an acre or so at the falls on the South River and dubbed the place Dunbar’s Falls. That summer four more men arrived and together they built a cabin on Lot 6, Concession 1. In the fall of that year the one-room cabin was shared by the four single men and a married couple, all of who were making roads to properties that they had laid claim to.
A couple of years later (1882) the route for a railroad was surveyed just west of the South River. Construction started the next year. Many local men hired on to build the roadbed for fifty cents a day. A station house was built in 1884 and a general store opened near the station house in 1885. The Grand Truck Railway initiated service to South River in 1886. When the Grand Truck reached the present location of South River the 2nd Concession Road to the existing settlement around Eagle Lake was improved. This road, the South River Road, was completed in 1895. It passed Cole’s farm, descended into Tyerman’s Marsh, and climbed uphill through the community at Uplands and on to Eagle Lake. This was the first road to the village of South River. The half-mile over the marsh was built on corduroy or small timbers laid side by side the entire width of the road. This road continued in use until the last inhabitants left the marsh in the 1940s. By then the 4th Concession Road (Eagle Lake Road) and the road between Machar and Strong Townships (the Boundary Road) had been much improved. The 2nd Concession Road was abandoned and by 1972 was completely grown over and impassable. In the 1990s it was reopened during the winter months as an unimproved snow-mobile trail.
The settlers realized soon after their arrival that the agricultural potential of the Township would never match that of southern Ontario. For many years wheat had been and would remain the principal cash crop of farmers in Ontario. In a letter to her brother and sister in 1878 or 1879, Flora Campbell mentioned that early frosts had killed their wheat crop every other year, making even flour a luxury that they could not afford. There was no market for the oats that they harvested. The family survived on beets and potatoes, as did their neighbors. She complained that the farm consisted of “rocks, wood and water with seven months of frost and snow.” But she never gave up hope. In 1882 her brother and his family arrived from Orillia and homesteaded 200 acres on Eagle Lake about one and a half miles from the Campbell farm. Despite the weather and the poor soil, the Campbells were determined to hold on until the price of land rose and they could sell the farm at a profit. They assumed that this would happen once the railroad arrived. About half of the pioneer families did eventually sell out and move either West or back to southern Ontario. Those farmers who remained depended on bush and sawmill work for cash rather than proceeds from their farm. Whatever her intentions, Flora Campbell never left the farm. She died in January 1883 at the age of 65. Her husband left the township and remarried. Two or three of her descendants still live in the area today.
The narrative continues at Machar Township, 1900-1950
