Lumbering

Photo: Lumbermen pose on crib after winching log boom down Loon Lake to the Deer Creek outlet 1910. (Reproduced from The Loon Calls with author’s permission.)

Lumbering… was to prove the salvation of the majority of the early settlers. Before the first farmers arrived to take up their lands, the lumber companies had already begun to work the township…Most of the local men took part in the lumber business in some fashion, many of them working in the camps in winter to supplement their farm income, and returning home in the spring to plant, till and harvest their frequently meagre crops of root vegetables, pease, grains, and in a few rare instances other fruits and vegetables generally cultivated on richer, more southerly soil. As the land became less and less productive, many went into stock-raising, and a number of them hired out with their own teams of horses to the winter lumber camps.

…In 1874. H.B. Rathbun (who in 1848 had established their first saw mill at Deseronto, known until 1881 as Mill Point on Lake Ontario, and had been flourishing there ever since) purchased his first land in Chandos from two Toronto merchants – seven lots around the Crowe River in the southeast section of the township… Two years later he bought an additional 1,338 acres, including four lots around “Saw Mill Bay”, at the north end of the lake where Deer Creek flows out…

The Rathbun Lumber Company continued to be the chief force in Chandos until the turn of the century when their empire began to crumble… Although the Rathbuns continued to operate in Chandos until after World War I began, they gradually began selling off their holdings and abandoning their timber rights. The lumber business was in a general decline with markets falling off and available timber stands becoming scarcer…

Excerpt from The Loon Calls – A History of the Township of Chandos with permission of the author Jean Murray Cole.