Fenelon Falls Photographed, circa 1875

For most of human history, it was artists who captured the images of people and places. Those who were wealthy enough to afford it, could sit (literally for days!) to have their portrait painted. Painters also depicted beautiful landscapes. Fenelon was fortunate to have Anne Langton, who sketched the development of the region in the 1830s and 1840s, but once she left, decades passed before there were any other known local images.

Photography became practical in France during the 1830s, and by the 1870s new methods had been devised that reduced exposure times to seconds. Photography started to become widespread, but was still a specialized profession—mass produced home cameras would have to wait for the twentieth century. Many towns were first photographed in the 1870s, including Fenelon Falls.

The image that appears in Fenelon Falls’ earliest photograph is one that might not be familiar to modern observers. It was taken just before many changes radically altered the appearance of this site. On the left is the timber slide, which was used for the annual log drive, and would persist into the twentieth century. In the background, the south shore of the Fenelon River has yet to be cleared and developed. On the right hand side, the corner of the old Wallis grist mill is visible, by then operated by R.C. Smith. It collapsed in 1883, and was replaced by the taller, square stone mill that was a local landmark until it burned in 1970 (Botany Spinners/Rosedale Furniture).

On the right hand side, in the foreground, lumber, or more likely mill slabs, are visible on the bank leading down to the river. Fenelon Falls’ sawmill was on the north shore (at this point there was not yet a canal) because it had many practical advantages. It was located beside the waterfall to use the water power, and the north shore was less precipitous than the cliffs to the south. Also, most of the population and businesses were located on the north shore. The lumber being produced at the mill was a bulky commodity and so it was manufactured beside the community’s wharf, where it could be loaded on scows to be towed behind steamships to Lindsay, where it was then replied onto rail cars for export.

This picture was taken at about the time that the Village of Fenelon Falls incorporated, specifically to bring the railway to town, and a few years before canal was built. The railway station would be built on the south side of river, spurring the development in the vicinity. The construction of the canal created Fenelon’s Island, while moving the wharf to the new north shore. Once the railway came to town, it no longer made sense to have the sawmill on the (soon to be) island, so R.C. Smith built his famous Red Mill on the south shore (Sobeys). Heritage House (R.W.H. Construction) was the company office. Within a few years, this scene was so radically altered that people comparing this photograph to later images from the same vantage might not realize that they are the same place. With the advent of recreational photography, this site would become one of the most commonly captured vistas in the region, photographed countless times. Who hasn’t snapped a shot of Fenelon Falls?

While the Victoria Railway initially advertised locally for labourers, it quickly resorted to bringing in 365 Icelanders, along with a few Swedes who started work soon after the onset of construction. Though many were ill with dysentery when they arrived (over 100 died, especially children) and only one of the party spoke English, they persevered, living around Kinmount in unfortunate circumstances while they laboured on the track. Missionary John Taylor petitioned the government to grant them aid, and a number relocated in 1875 to settle at Gimli, Manitoba.

Constructing the southern end of the Victoria Railway was fairly straightforward, as it followed the Scugog River and northwest shore of Sturgeon Lake much of the way to Fenelon Falls. Though it required a few rock cuts, filling a stretch three thousand feet long at McLaren's Creek, and a $20,000 bridge at Fenelon Falls, much of the land was relatively level, and the grades were often easily achieved just by skimming off the topsoil. To ballast the road, the company used a steam shovel named the Steam Irishman that moved 600 to 800 yards of gravel daily. But north of Kinmount, the route was far more challenging. Many rock cuts and trestle bridges were necessary, and a sink hole about four miles north of Kinmount continually surprised planners with the quantity of fill that disappeared. Crews resorted to driving piles into the mire to keep the track up.

By 1878, the railway was complete to Haliburton, and on November 26, a locomotive pulled in for the opening gala. It passed through an arch pronouncing that it brought "National Prosperity" and "Progress." In hindsight, this event marked the completion of the Victoria Railway, but at the time local boosters were still expecting the line to be completed through to Mattawa on the Ottawa River. But as the sinkholes were filled and rock cuts made between Kinmount and Haliburton, it became clear that completing the line through what is now Algonquin Park to reach Mattawa would be very expensive. The promoters continued to demand funding to complete the railway, but they were never able to generate anywhere near the necessary amount.

It did not take long for the line to be renamed the Victoria Railway, reflecting its actual extent. In 1880 it was taken over by the Midland Railway, which built a Fenelon Falls station on the south side of Lindsay Street, two years later. The new station soon led to complaints that it was too close to the road, blocking traffic when trains pulled in. The Midland Railway was later amalgamated into the Grand Trunk Railway, then the Canadian National Railway.

The iron horse was transformative to many communities along its route. In the 1880s and 1890s, Fenelon Falls was home to the Red Mill, the largest sawmill on the Upper Trent Watershed, built on the south side of the Falls and served by the railway (it was larger than Mossom Boyd’s more famous Bobcaygeon mills). Lumber was bulky to transport and laborious to pile and repile. Without the railway, it is unlikely that the Red Mill would have ever expanded to that extent. Many communities along the line literally owed their existence to the railway, as trade and passengers concentrated around its stations.

The railway employed many workers, especially at Lindsay. It did not take long for the Haliburton sink hole to begin swallowing the track once again, as section crews were continually filling in under the rails all along the line to keep them level. The company hired clerks, freight handlers, maintenance crews, engineers and yard hands. As was often the case in the nineteenth century many of the jobs were dangerous. Until air brakes were employed, men manually clubbed the brake wheels to stop trains. To do this, and to switch cars, labourers were expected to climb on, off or between moving cars. Braking and coupling cars, were both notoriously risky jobs. Missing fingers was often taken as proof of railway experience. Despite the dangers, many farm boys (especially from Haliburton where shallow, rocky soils limited the returns from agriculture) were eager to secure a job on the railway. It was an escape from the constant manual labour that went into farming. The railway opened a whole continent of possibilities—it could carry you almost anywhere in North America!